


Faraway From Here

by ReaperZX7



Category: OMORI (Video Game)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Friendship, Gen, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Mental Health Issues, Mystery, Post-Canon, actually 99 percent canon compliant, because of that one detail the author messed up on but cant change now, so basically dairy based butter substitute
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-23
Updated: 2021-03-04
Packaged: 2021-03-14 20:53:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 24,060
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28926828
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ReaperZX7/pseuds/ReaperZX7
Summary: William Sullivan (Will to his Mother and non existent friends) is 14 when his family moves out to a tiny suburban town on the very edge of nowhere.He fully expects his new life in Faraway Town to be dull and monotonous, but when he discovers a hidden message behind his new home his life becomes a little less boring.
Relationships: Hero/Mari (OMORI)
Comments: 34
Kudos: 185





	1. Prologue: The End of Summer

The house is large, surprisingly large, considering his mother bought it for a considerably low sum. The workers touching up the house haven’t removed the ancient “FOR SALE” sign stabbed into the berm out front. The decrepit, rusted chains holding the sign aloft swing in the breeze.

It’d disintegrate if ever disturbed, he imagines.

He walks up past the sign and gives a shallow wave to the workers outside painting over the flaking cladding on the second floor. Their car isn’t in the driveway, so he doesn’t bother calling out to see if his Mother is around the house. Instead, he walks around what is to be his new home, the living room has already been touched up and furnished so he lounges on the couch and stares up at the ceiling. He hears workers in the next room over and peers through the doorway to watch them install countertops and lay tiles in their new kitchen.

They're probably going to have to live off of takeout food for the next couple of days.

Further exploration over the next half hour reveals a dining room, and a closet on the same floor. Nothing else catches his interest save for the study on the other side of the stairs. The space is dominated by the heavy cloth covered object in the middle of the room. He lifts up the edge of the dust covered canvas fabric to reveal a glossy black surface. Just as he guessed from the shape, there’s a grand piano hidden underneath, in pristine condition despite being left behind by the previous owners.

It's a little sad, he thinks, that no one in his family plays piano.

He doesn't really have the motivation to learn either. Maybe his Mother will sell it off to clear space in the room. But at the same time, she works at her office, or on the move. He can't imagine her needing this room so there's an equally likely chance that the piano will stay here buried under layers of dust and fabric. Maybe until another family moves into this house far off in the future.

Without any rooms left on the ground floor he surveys the upstairs section of the house. There's a bathroom which is currently empty, but functional. As well as two bedrooms, one that his Mother has taken the liberty of moving all of his boxes into. There’s a bright red box cutter that’s been left atop his stack of belongings, so he takes it and begins slicing open the duct tape holding each box closed and unpacking the contents into his new room.

Halfway through the process he sprawls over his new bed, facing up at his new ceiling, listening to the sounds of workers refurbishing his new house.

William Sullivan, “Will” to his Mother and non-existent friends, is fourteen years old. His family has just moved into a new house in a town called Faraway that could only have been more aptly named Nowhere or Not Important.

At some point his world ended, and now he finds the one replacing it is terribly boring…

\---

He finishes unloading a box of his clothes when he realizes that there’s no real point in opening anything else. Most of the house is still being worked on and being furbished, which means he can’t fill any of those spaces with his various other belongings.

At most he places his meagre toiletries in the blank bathroom and hangs some of his winter coats up in the closet downstairs. But everything else he tediously carries downstairs and shoves into the back of the walk-in closet. He pockets the box cutter for later when there’s enough time and space to air out everything.

Without much else to do he slides open the glass doors in the living room leading out into the yard and takes in a breath of fresh air.

Like the rest of the house, the yard is spacious. The area is surrounded by a bright white picket fence, which is almost blindingly reflective in the sunset light. The builders must have repainted it before he arrived.

Out beyond the fence Will expects more suburbia but is instead met with a sprawling forest. There’s a gate in the fence and a faint overgrown path so perhaps the previous owners made frequent excursions into the woods.

… Some other time… he’ll wait a week or two before wandering off into the woods to get mauled by a bear or something…

The sunset light, the blinding fence, the shade of the trees beyond the boundary of his house, and the gentle breeze stirring everything gently. It feels like a painting, but so much more alive than the dull and dusty things locked away in museums.

Everything draws him towards the centerpiece of the frame, a large patch of blooming wildflowers. Their pastel colors bursting out from in between vivid green leaves. He sees a thin track cutting through the plants into the center of the garden where a large stump remains. It’d be the perfect place to just sit and watch the breeze go on. But when he walks among the knee-high stalks and brushes his hands across the cut surface to dust off the centuries of time echoed in the rings, instead of rough grain his fingers touch smooth cut etching.

The carving is almost invisible against the grain of the wood. Instead of sitting he finds himself kneeling among the gnarled roots, his head down low across the surface of the cut, looking for the shadows cast by the low sun and tracing the grooves with his fingertips.

Slowly with his hands and in his mind, he pieces together… a message…?

Out loud he softly repeats.

_~_

_Everything is going to be ok._

_September 7 th_

_~_

A gale whips his messy brown hair over his eyes. He brushes the strands from his face and looks back to see a storm of flower petals whirling all around him, high up into the late summer sky, dancing with the deep green leaves of the forest, the thin white clouds, the last sunbeams of the day, the bright stars defying the hour, the ephemeral moon, and the deep blue of the rapidly darkening sky.

And in that moment, he thinks that maybe new doesn’t have to be so _empty._ New doesn’t have to be blank walls and hollow cupboards. New doesn’t have to be white paint and smooth tiles. New doesn’t have to be some cavernous void swallowing up today, tomorrow, the day after, the day after that, and every day from now on.

It’s the end of summer, school starts tomorrow, September is about two months away. Maybe when the 7th rolls around, things won’t be so _terrifyingly_ new anymore.

The moment passes, the petals fall, the light leaves, the air is clear and soon cold, but the feeling lingers behind.

He hears a car pull into the driveway out front.

\---

That night around on opposite sides of a familiar dining table in an unfamiliar dining room, over hot pizza and steaming tea, his mother asks him about his thoughts on the house.

Its nice, he replies. They talk about the piano in the study and the boxes in the wardrobe. They talk about the bedrooms upstairs and the unfinished kitchen the next room over. They talk about _boring_ afternoons and the “exciting” schooldays waiting for him.

But Will doesn’t tell her about the message on the stump. The message that he silently repeats again in the dark of his bedroom as he drifts off to sleep.

The message he hopes will make his new life in Faraway a little less boring.


	2. Favors and Friends

His Mother has always been a morning person.

Will is also up at an unfortunate time, though much less voluntarily. But if he’s going to successfully navigate to school by himself then it’s probably better to be early by hours rather than late by even a minute.

With the low morning sun stinging his eyes and filling him with an ungodly amount of loathing, he joins his Mother at the dining table. There’s cereal and milk, as well as pieces of toast and jars of spread all laid out in anticipation of his arrival. No eggs or bacon thanks to their currently inoperative stove but he’ll survive.

Breakfast is not silent, on account of his Mother laying a printed map out on the table. His route is jotted down with blue pen with his destination, a building labeled “Faraway High” circled a couple of times. They check over the route again together, ensure that Will’s bag is packed “properly”, which in this case means filled to the brim with empty books and cheap stationary.

… And when his Mother checks her watch for the time, he promises to clean up the dishes, before ushering her out the door.

He places the last plate on the dish rack as he hears their car pull out of the driveway. It’s still _too goddamn early_ and he doesn’t want to risk falling asleep on the couch, so instead he heads out into the yard and inhales a shock of cold morning air to wake himself up before unfolding the map in his pocket and doing his best to memorize the route to his new school.

\---

He manages to arrive at school a full hour and a half early. So early that the teacher his Mother said would be waiting for him… isn’t. He leans on the railings of the front steps and waits for them to show up.

A groundskeeper walks by and gives him a quizzical look, but otherwise doesn’t interact with him.

Birds twitter overhead but fly off before he can get a good look at them.

A few early students arrive and pay him no mind as they walk past him into the school building chatting amongst themselves.

Only after all of this does a teacher stroll out the doors, realize his presence, look around, and inquire “William Sullivan…?”

At finally being acknowledged he straightens up off the railing and answers “Yeah… that’s me”

The teacher is caught off guard by his punctuality, but she quickly recovers with a “You’re here early.”

“I just arrived a minute ago” he lies.

\---

“Mrs. Turner” as she introduces herself, is an older woman with greying hair that she attempts to dye back to blonde, is some form of religious if the distinct beads she sports around her neck are any indication, and has an impatiently long stride that William experiences as she leads him through the halls of Faraway High, barely pausing to point out the library, gymnasium, cafeteria. He hastily tries to commit all the locations to memory, but when Mrs Turner stops in front of a classroom, _his_ new classroom, he has to toss all of his mental stock into memorizing and placing that room into his headspace map.

“William…” Mrs Turner calls out from inside the classroom when she notices he hasn’t entered.

“Sorry! Just… nervous” he steps inside the classroom where there’s another younger but sterner faced teacher seated at the desk inside. When William enters the other teacher stands up and offers her hand while Mrs Turner introduces them.

“This is Miss Grant, she’s your homeroom teacher. Miss Grant, this is William Sullivan.”

Miss Grant has perfectly cut nails and wears a blue blazer jacket that exudes business despite being left unbuttoned and clashing with her red rimmed glasses. “It’s nice to meet you William.” She politely offers.

“It’s nice to meet you too Miss Grant.” He politely responds back.

With introductions out of the way, Mrs Turner quickly excuses herself from the classroom to let William “get settled in”.

He doesn’t miss the way Mrs Turner’s expression flattens as she turns around, or the way Miss Grant “smiles” at her as she leaves.

“You’re here earlier than I expected.” Miss Grant says after the clack of Mrs Turner’s heels leave the corridor.

“I didn’t want to be late.”

“Smart kid” she compliments, before walking through the aisles of empty desks. “There are two free seats, one in the back and one by the window.” She points at each of his choices “take your pick.”

He walks over to the window seat and hangs his bag on a hook underneath the desk before transferring his books into the desk tray.

Miss Grant in the meantime returns back to the front of the room and writes on the whiteboard up front in clean neat bold letters:

_Miss Kimberly Grant: Class 1E_

Both of them finish their tasks almost synchronously and William settles in for a long wait.

“I doubt Mrs Turner gave you a full tour” Miss Grant interrupts from her desk “If you like, you can go and explore the school before class starts. You don’t have to wait here the whole time.”

William considers her offer before relenting and standing up from his seat.

“Leave your bag here if you want, I’ll look after it. If you get lost feel free to ask any of the teachers or students to lead you back to class 1E” she tilts her head towards the greeting on the whiteboard.

William nods “I’ll do that… thanks.”

“No problem”

\---

He doesn’t need to ask anyone to lead him back to his classroom thankfully. And he has a good enough grasp of the building’s layout by the end of the morning to at least be able to navigate back to the front door from his classroom. Soon enough he’s back in class 1E now a bustling hub of chatty teenagers sharing stories of their summer vacations that were not experienced with their classmates.

William looks out the window. In the reflection he sees closed circles, lines already drawn up in the sand, tight mason wrought walls with no cracks nor gaps to insert himself into. No one acknowledges the new kid in their classroom save for the bookish looking girl with wavy shoulder length black hair and thin framed glasses who realizes the empty seat next to her is suddenly occupied.

She looks over towards him, after setting down the book she’s been reading from for the past couple of minutes, and waits until he quietly sighs and turns around to face her.

“Hey” she says.

“Hey” he replies back…

“… I’m Jane, it’s nice to meet you.”

He offers a faint smile of his own in return “I’m William, its nice to meet you too.”

…

And that’s the end of their conversation as the bookish girl returns to her novel.

\---

Once class starts and everyone has settled down, Miss Grant has him come up to the front and introduce himself.

He sticks to the basics, his name is William, his family moved here recently, he likes the outdoors but isn’t very sporty.

He answers a couple of questions from classmates that raise their hands, mostly about where he lived before…

Class is boring. Most of what little material they cover has already been taught to him at his last school. What actually takes up the most time is Miss Grant laying out the schedule for the term, writing up a brief weekly timeline on the side of the board to which sports matches, fundraisers, and other events are added one by one…

None of them really catch his interest.

\---

During lunchtime he follows the flow of the crowd over to the cafeteria. A group of kids that he vaguely recognizes from class beckon him over and he sits with them. Introductions pass by in a whirlwind and soon he’s fielded with more questions, which he answers with brevity and tact.

…

He gets the feeling that they might not invite him over to their table tomorrow.

…

It doesn’t bother him much.

\---

By mid afternoon he’s pretty much given up on trying to focus on class… he stares out the window as Miss Grant writes on the whiteboard. During a lull in the lesson, he stares down at his exercise book filled with notes on topics that he’s already memorized…

He gets the sudden urge to scrunch up the useless pages when there’s a knock at the classroom door.

At first, he doesn’t bother to look up. But when he realizes that the rest of the class’s conversations have instead died down into whispers and chatter, he glances up towards the newcomer in the class.

**Pink**

The woman who just walked in to chat with Miss Grant has a head of long bright pink hair.

And he almost chokes on his tongue when Miss Grant points her over straight towards him.

“Hey, William, right?” she greets, crouching down to his level by his desk “The name is Aubrey Parker, I’m the guidance counselor around here, and you have an appointment.”

\---

William doesn’t think that the bubblegum pink haired, blue jeans and leather jacket crop top wearing, woman walking ahead of him is qualified to be anywhere near teenagers let alone in any position of authority. But sure enough, they both arrive at an office clearly labeled guidance counselor. He takes a moment to read the name plate on the door as Miss Parker fishes keys out of her jacket.

_Aubergine Parker_

And he has to suppress a snort. No wonder she introduces herself as Aubrey.

The office is small and filled to the brim with knickknacks and wall dressings. Miss Parker takes a seat at her desk and pulls out a packet of gum, unwrapping and tossing a stick into her mouth before offering William some. He pauses for a bit before tentatively holding out his hand for Miss Parker to place it in. “Make sure you spit it in the bin after.”

He unwraps the gum and pops it in his mouth before tossing the wrapper in the small wastebasket by the desk. “Also don’t sit down” Miss Parker tosses in just as he’s about to lower himself into one of the seats opposite from her. “… Pardon…?”

“Don’t sit down” she repeats again “or rather, you’re not allowed to sit down. If you sit down this becomes a meeting and meetings are boring…”

This woman is clearly un-suited to dealing with teenagers if she’s trying to pull some weird power move shenanigans on him… But he’s dealt with worse, and honestly doesn’t have the energy to complain… in the end he complies and pushes back off of the armrests he was about to lower himself down between. Without the option of sitting, he slowly paces the length of the room. Miss Parker remains silent as she spins side to side in her swivel chair.

…

This is going nowhere…

He takes a closer look at the walls, walking right up to them and scanning the posters, certificates, photos. He brushes a hand over the surface and is surprised not only when not a trace of dust flies up, but that Miss Parker doesn’t scold him at all for touching her stuff…

Now that he takes a closer look around, the office is small and filled to the brim, but strangely enough not cluttered at all. Everything is clean, everything is neat, everything is spaced half an inch apart without any overlap, stacking, or cramming. The posters on the wall, the trophies in the cabinet, the papers on the desk, everything is tidy, well used, and obviously cherished.

“So why am I here…?” he finally questions. Having reached the end of his observations.

“Any relationship professional, intimate, or casual, begins with an establishing of character from both sides.” She recites monotonously as if reading from one of the handbooks on the shelf behind her. And then clarifies with a more animated tone “You’re here to make a first impression on me. And vice versa”

And William realizes that that’s exactly what’s been happening. He looks at the guidance counsellor with bubblegum pink hair and an office filled with memorabilia…

And a baseball bat mounted on a plaque above her desk… he notes, looking up…

And he decides that if he’s played along this far… then there’s no harm in playing along a little further…

\---

“What’s this photo?”

“Summer Camp, last year. Second kid on the left almost started a wildfire.”

“Is he still here at school?”

“Yeah, he won a prize at the school science fair recently.” “Next one is in a year if you’re interested.” She remarks.

“… Summer Camp or the Science Fair?”

“Both… Just don’t burn anything.”

\---

“Is this certificate actually from the mayor?”

“Do you really think I’d forge a certificate from the mayor?” she pops her bubblegum with a loud snap and ponders a beat… “Actually, don’t answer that. Yes, it’s real.” she tilts her head towards an umbrella bin in the corner of the room filled with what look to be trash picker claws. “I run a volunteer group in my spare time, we pick up trash. Apparently, that’s enough for a certificate from the mayor these days”

“Probably because there’s not much else that happens around here.”

She snirks inelegantly “You~ are going to fit right in” she comments with a faux wistful lilt.

\---

“Do you play sports?” William asks, reading out the engravings on a couple of trophies in her cabinet.

“Those aren’t mine” she answers “The school is too cheap to invest into a proper trophy cabinet, so I’m just holding onto them for a friend in the meantime. And I don’t play sports anymore, not since Mr Plantegg retired.”

“Mr… Plantegg…?”

She points to the baseball bat mounted on the wall behind her. William peers a little closer and indeed the plaque is engraved “Mr Plantegg”

He gulps nervously when he also notices the series of small holes in the head of the baseball bat.

“Haven’t had time to find a replacement…” she says, grinning viciously.

\---

Miss Parker also asks him questions, his family is doing fine, it’s just him and his Mother. The builders haven’t finished refurbishing their kitchen yet, so they had takeout last night. He hasn’t made any friends but its only his first day and he’s in no rush.

There are also questions he doesn’t ask. He doesn’t ask about the quiet… almost inaudible classical music playing over her computer’s speakers. He also doesn’t ask about the plant on her desk that’s clearly fake, but the soil is damp anyway. He doesn’t ask about her bubblegum pink hair, her style of dress, or the lack of jewelry on her hands. He files all those questions away for another time that might not come.

\---

“Do you interview every kid like this…?” is a question he does ask.

“Only the ones that transfer in halfway through the year and might have trouble making friends.” As if suddenly remembering something, she turns towards her computer and begins tapping on the keyboard… one… key… at… a… time…

William winces at the display of Miss Parker’s technological ineptitude.

“Which reminds me~” she says as if she didn’t just take a full minute to bring up a window on the screen “I’m going to do you a _favor_.”

“A favor…?”

“Mhmm~ pick one of your classmates.”

“… What?”

“Pick one of your classmates” she repeats again “I’m sure your hearing isn’t that bad.”

“… I… don’t know any of their names…”

“Doesn’t matter, pick one.”

He flounders… and silently apologizes as he subjects one of his classmates to this madwoman’s whims… “Jane… the girl who sit’s next to me in class.”

Miss Parker doesn’t comment on his sudden knowledge of her name. She only rattles the scroll wheel on her mouse and hefts her brick of a computer screen around to face William. “Janet Goodman, this her?”

William nods at the slightly out of date photo on the screen.

“You sure…?” she teases, standing up and stretching her arms before William can even respond. “Too late, come on~” she has a devious grin on her face as she strolls out of the office and into the hallway. And all William can do is follow her nervously.

\---

On Miss Parkers orders William waits outside his classroom, by the doorway, out of sight. Much like with she did with him, she swaggers inside and plucks Jane from her mundanity, against her will, likely breaking several school policies in the process.

William weakly waves at her as the pair emerge from classroom 1E. “Sorry…” he mutters for no reason in particular. But Miss Parker is off before either of them can question or explain, beckoning them both along with a hooked finger. Jane hefts her schoolbag over her shoulder and lets out a sigh before following along. Without any other options William hurries along as to not get left behind.

Miss Parker traces a familiar path through the halls of Faraway High. Three sets of sneakers tap an off-kilter rhythm that echoes through the empty halls, past oblivious classrooms, and rows upon rows of lockers, until finally Miss Parker bursts through the middle of a set of quad wide, spring loaded doors leading…

Outside…?

William follows her out onto the steps and looks back to indeed confirm that they have passed through the front doors to Faraway High. He feels a hand on his shoulder as Miss Parker gently nudges him down the steps. He and Jane beside him, who still has a sour look on her face, watch as their school guidance counselor takes a seat on the top step and begin fishing around in her pockets.

She pulls out two crisp 10$ bills and holds them out, one in each hand.

“Congrats~” she says as if that explains what’s happening and waggles the notes in front of them. William is the first to accept his note with no small amount of hesitation. And Jane’s sour look fades slightly as she snatches hers out of Miss Parker’s fingers.

“Great! Now get out of here”

“What.” He and Jane both say in unison.

“I’m giving both you the rest of the day off~” she pulls a notepad and pen out of one of her inner pockets and scribbles out a note for each of them which reads:

_Free Pass_

_XX/XX_

_Aubrey Parker~_

William looks down at the note in disbelief… there’s a cursive flourish to Miss Parker’s signature, little love hearts doodled around today’s date, and a drawing of an… eggplant? That’s been stabbed with spikey nails…

“If any adults bother you, just show them that.”

What the hell.

“I’ll say” Jane responds… did… did he just say that last part out loud?

“I’ll handle your attendance so don’t worry about it. Go off and have fun… or whatever it is kids do these days~” and with that Miss Parker hops up from her spot on the stairs, dusts the dirt off her backside, and strides back into the school with a dismissive wave and a yawn. The doors swing and clatter in her wake as if stirred by a sudden gale.

Only after the swinging doors come to a stop, and he and Jane are left in awkward and unbearable silence, does William pocket the 10$ bill. He turns around and begins to walk away from his new school.

“Hey, where are you going!?” Jane calls out still reeling from Miss Parker’s “favor.”

“Home” he replies with a shrug. “You heard her; we have the rest of the day off. Where else am I supposed to go?”

“Back to class maybe!?” But Jane’s suggestion just earns another shrug.

“Nah, too boring…”

“And going home is supposed to be better!?” she’s probably just arguing to cope with her sudden change in schedule William supposes.

“No…” he replies anyway, which manages to derail Jane’s exasperation and replace it instead with confusion as she processes what he’s just said. “I just moved here yesterday… I literally don’t know where else to go…” he elaborates, smothering the chuckle that threatens to emerge at the sight of Jane gaping like a confused fish.

She doesn’t argue anything else; she takes off the thin framed glasses on her face, pinches the bridge of her nose, replaces the glasses, glances back at the school building, looks back towards William who at this point has resumed his departure, and makes a supremely disgruntled whine.

“… Wait!”

\---

William looks up at the gaudy yellow and black sign above what he assumes is a comic store. HOBBEEZ isn’t exactly very indicative of their wares, but the Captain Spaceboy advertisement in the front window and the arcade machine he spies in the back gives him a better idea of what he’s literally walking into.

“We could wait until school finishes” Jane suggests. “That way it’d look less suspicious.”

William just looks through the window and makes brief eye contact with the clerk behind the counter “… no point now” he says as he opens the door and strolls inside.

“Wait wh-” Jane hushes herself to draw less attention to the two teenagers walking into a comic book store during school hours.

Now that they’re inside William looks around unsure of where to start, before Jane suddenly hooks arms with him and drags him over to a shelf filled with comic books, that also happens to block line of sight to the cash register.

“Do you read comics?” she asks quietly.

“Yeah” he replies… “Do _you_ read comics?” he snarkily shoots back, looking up and down the girl who was reading an aged leather-bound novel before class… He gets a light punch on the shoulder for his sass.

“Just shut up and read.”

Jane picks one of the magazines up off the shelf and flips through it, while William busies himself trying to find a comic he hasn’t already read. Eventually he finds a Captain Spaceboy issue that he has no idea existed. Probably because it was printed before he was born.

Both of them stealthily glance ever so often over the shelf, to peek at the clerk behind the counter who hasn’t moved at all since they so conspicuously entered the store.

He gets half-way through the issue when he decides to round the shelf and go up to the counter. But a tug on the collar of his hoodie pulls him back behind the comics. “What are you doing!?” Jane chastises him in a hushed tone that is definitely not audible in the silence of the shop.

“I like reading it, so I’m going to go buy it.” he answers, “it’s only fair.”

“NO! not that! We’re not supposed to be here!”

“I mean technically we’re allowed to be here, you’re just making this a bigger deal than it should be”

“If they report us to the school we could get!-”

“ **Ahem** ” a new voice interrupts with a sickeningly saccharine tone… “ _Heyyyy_ guy and gal~, shouldn’t you be in school?”

Jane gulps loudly as the shop clerk leans down from over the other side of the comic shelf at them. Bright amber, almost moon yellow, eyes stare both of them down.

The pair look up at the pompadour bearing clerk, to the floor, to each other, then back to the clerk. “W-we’re running an e-errand…? For our teacher!”

The wide smile on the clerk’s face doesn’t shift a millimeter as he continues to stare down Jane for a good few seconds. By the time his attention cycles back to William, Jane has shrunken back several steps. “You wanna give it a try _buddy_?”

Williams only response is to fumble around in his pocket and retrieve Miss Parker’s note.

The clerk tilts his head and strides around to their side of the shelf before picking the note out of William’s presenting palm and unfolding it.

…

And then he passes the note back to William before walking back to the counter, grumbling something that sounds suspiciously like “ _damn it Aubrey_ ” all the while.

Jane’s shoulders suddenly untense and she nearly drops to the floor. “Holy crap that actually worked…?”

“… This town is _so_ weird.” William concludes aloud.

\---

With the clerk granting them their blessing, William and Jane browse the store with newfound freedom. Will ends up buying the issue that he finished reading and a music disk, while Jane buys a couple of miscellaneous craft books. The store clerk assures the both of them that he won’t be reporting them to school (as it’s apparently “not worth the bat”) so they can relax.

After their purchases, the both of them take a break outside by the fountain where William tosses in the spare change from his purchases.

With not much else to do they talk.

Jane tells him all about the plaza, how it’s the only real source of entertainment around here. There are no movie theatres, or bigger shopping malls. Just a comic shop, pizza place, supermarket, and hardware store. There’s a park a few streets down that she points out, but William’s had enough adventure for one day.

“Miss Parker has a fan club at school you know” Jane states, shifting the topic of the conversation.

“Really…?”

“Yeah, she’s pretty popular.”

William considers the thought for a moment “I can see it, I bet she has a bunch of boys fawning over her.”

That earns a chuckle from Jane “… it’s not the _boys_ that fawn over her.”

…

“ _Oh_ ” is all William can say in reply.

“Besides, Mr Owens is more popular with the boys.”

“Mr Owens…?”

“Mhmm… he’s the gym teacher” she clarifies, remembering that William is new in town. “Used to be a pretty good athlete apparently, He coached the basketball team to the finals last year. The baseball team made it to the quarter finals with his help too.”

“Miss Parker doesn’t coach the baseball team…?”

“No… though now that you mention it, she does have that bat hung up on the wall of her office…”

William pauses for a moment “Actually no that makes perfect sense.”

Jane shoots William a quizzical look as she waits for him to elaborate.

“That bat? _Mr Plantegg_? It has holes in the head.”

“…. Holes…?” she asks, sidestepping the fact that Miss Parker’s bat is named Mr Plantegg.

“Yeah… _holes_ … from _nails_ ”

The implication causes Jane to burst out into laughter and William can’t help but join in.

\---

But time moves on and eventually William pulls out the folded map in his bag… peering closely at the low-quality greyscale printout, trying to locate Faraway Plaza or Othermart on the map.

Jane upon seeing him struggle to navigate, asks which street he lives on.

Which leads them to this moment.

“Oh… you live in the ghost house.” Jane comments as she stands on the sidewalk facing William’s new house.

“The ghost house…?”

“yeah… this place is haunted… or was haunted I guess… if you’re living here now.”

“… Does it stop being haunted just because people moved in…?”

“Dunno… but… this house has been empty ever since I can remember…”

Which by extrapolation also means that it’s possible the house has been empty longer than the two of them have been alive.

Its an oddly sobering thought.

“Have you ever been inside…?” William asks.

Jane shakes her head.

…

“Wanna come see then? Since it’s apparently not haunted anymore?” he jokes with what he hopes is a lighthearted tone.

“Ok” Jane agrees after a pause.

There are workers still moving through the house, mostly in the kitchen so that’s out of the equation. And he’s definitely not taking a girl upstairs to his or his Mother’s room … so that really just leaves…

“Are your parents not home…?” Jane asks as they enter the living room.

“No… my Mother works late…” and leaves early, but he omits that last part.

“Not what I imagined a haunted house to look like.”

“Little do you know I’ve actually been a ghost this whole time~” William jokes.

“pff, shut up. Ghosts don’t exist.”

“Then why did you think this place was haunted then???”

“I don’t know! every kid for three blocks around calls this place the ghost house!”

Their meaningless conversations continue as William leads her through the house and into the study. If anything is haunted it’d be that grand piano which is too clean, too opulent to have been left behind for any good reason.

But when Jane taps out chords and a simple melody on the keys, no ghost reaches out from underneath the rest of the dust sheets. “I used to take lessons as a kid, but I gave up pretty quickly” she elaborates.

William looks out the large full wall windows into the back yard and realizes that, _there is one place_ that’s been haunting him ever since he arrived here.

\---

“What does it mean?” Jane asks as she closely examines the cut stump out in the back yard and the words etched into its surface.

“I don’t know…” he answers honesty. “I think it’s a message, but I don’t know who its for or who left it…”

“huh… neat…” She finishes tracing the letters and backs up from the stump expecting William to do the same.

But he doesn’t move… “Is… is it weird that… I really want to know…?”

It’s a phrase, a date, and a stump. There’s not much there to understand Jane thinks. But she holds her tongue.

“I mean-… It’s not like it was meant for me? Some stranger carved the words waiting for some other person to read them… but” he falters… “I still want to know…”

“Have you asked your Mother about it?” Jane suggests “maybe she can get in contact with the original owners of the house?”

But William just shakes his head “I haven’t told anyone about it…” He rises up from the stump and gives her a wry smile. “It’s fine though, it’s not that important.”

Jane takes a deep breath as he walks through the flowers and past her “How about I help you research it then?”

She watches his face go through several muted emotions in rapid succession. “Really?” he hesitantly asks.

“Well, you’ve got me interested in it now~ and it’s not like you’d be able to accomplish much on your own being new in town. _I’ve_ lived here all my life.”

Tracking down the history behind a mysterious hidden message in a house that’s been haunted for years? “It’ll be fun~” she adds as she realizes that she’s stepped right into the plot of one of her novels “like detective work.”

…

“I’ll be in your care then, _Holmes_.” William replies, finally on board with the idea.

“Please, Doyle is overrated. I prefer Greenwood’s _Miss Fisher_.”

\---

They spend the rest of the afternoon jotting down notes and ideas in one of Jane’s notebooks. And when the hour has passed and both of them hold a nebulous, yet crafted plan of attack in their minds, Jane waves back to William on his doorstep as she leaves for home.

“See you at school tomorrow Jane.”

“Yeah, see you tomorrow William.”

“ _Will_ ” he corrects her “Just Will is fine.”

She smiles at the weight of the new name on her tongue. “See you tomorrow then _Will_.”


	3. The First Clue, Date

“So” Jane says as she places her lunch tray down on the table next to Will’s and nudges him over. “What’s stopping us from just waiting for September 7th to come round? It’s less than two months away.”

There’s no real reason behind forcing him to move other than to get his attention… or to annoy him. William glances around the empty table before making a show of rolling his eyes and shuffling left so Jane can sit. “Don’t wanna”

He takes a bite of his lunch… its surprisingly good, better than his last school. The bread isn’t chewy, the meat patties aren’t bland, the vegetables are seasoned properly. He sees a couple of other students shove the steamed veggies to the side and he scoffs a little.

He realizes that Jane is waiting for him to explain so he quickly gulps down his mouthful. “What year?” he asks before stabbing a baby potato with his fork and biting into it.

“… The message didn’t have a year…?”

“Ex- _mph_ -actly” he sets down his fork “September 7th when? This year? Next year? Last Year? If I wait, I might have to wait decades… if it’s already happened then I’ll be waiting forever. Better to figure it out myself”

“ _Ourselves._ ” Jane corrects.

“Ourselves.” He agrees.

“So” Jane finally begins prodding at her own lunch tray “What’s the plan bossman?”

“We wait” he starts, and then continues when Jane shoots him an unimpressed look “…-for school to finish… and then we use the computers in the library to look up September 7th” It’s a simple plan really.

\---

“Can I be completely totally honest with you Will?”

“Uhh… sure…?”

“You are an idiot.”

At the insult Will sheepishly scratches the back of his head.

“We have three main pieces of information currently” she continues ignoring his lack of input “One! The phrase: Everything is going to be ok. Two! The date etched into the stump: September 7th. And three! The stump itself and the fact that the message is carved there. With all that in mind, which piece of information do you think is most likely to lead us to a clue?”

Will doesn’t even need to pause and think, it’s been weighing on him ever since he first found the message. “The date” he answers.

“Oh, good answer” Jane makes a show of clapping. “That's wrong though. Here’s the issue see, what’s special about September 7th?

... NOTHING!” she shouts before he can possibly answer. “THERE ARE 365 DAYS IN THE YEAR, NONE OF THEM ARE SPECIAL SAVE FOR CHRISTMAS AND NEW YEARS”

“I mean… that’s not… true…” each word out of Will’s mouth is punctuated by Jane glaring fiercer and fiercer at him.

“Oh~ my mistake how could I forget about-” She riffles through the pages the two of them just printed out from the school library “the feast day of St Regina on Sept 7th, or the end of the boxer rebellion on Sept 7th 1901” she begins rapidly pulling each sheet of paper out of the stack and shoving them into Will’s hands “the birthdays of Buddy Holly, Elizabeth I, Margaret Landon, and Emperor Suzaku of Japan, all of which are Virgos if you’re into astrology. Just like **_every other person born_** on September 7th!”

“I know I know jeez… you don’t have to yell.”

“So, William Sullivan, did you have any other avenues of investigation to follow up on?”

He pauses and ends up shaking his head.

“This is why I have to step up and be the smart one in our detective duo. Come along Watson!”

“I thought you said Doyle was overrated.”

“He is” she says, marching off down the halls. “But Doyle is overrated like bread is overrated. You still need it to build a sandwich.”

\---

Jane’s plan of action is to pay a visit to the newspaper club. A bit of sweet talking gets them into the archives room where there are issues of each and every school newsletter not only for Faraway High, but also the middle school immediately across the street.

William stares at the shelves upon shelves of archived newsletters. “Do you people really archive every newsletter…?” There are enough stacks of paper here to stretch back to the school’s founding.

“Welcome to Faraway Town, we excessively document everything because there’s literally nothing else to do” she gives him a pat on the back and begins searching through each stack of papers.

With a sigh Will gets to work as well.

\---

“What makes you think that the school has something to do with the message?” Will asks as he replaces a stack of papers on the shelf.

“Honestly? Just a hunch.” Jane pulls out a newsletter and reads over it “September 7th, Multi-school sports rally?” she calls out aloud.

“… I don’t think that’s it.”

“Yeah, me neither” she agrees before continuing on with her previous topic “But do you really think an adult is going to carve a cryptic message in a stump?”

“Fair point”

“That house has been empty for a long time, any kid in the neighborhood could have jumped the fence and left the message there” She has to pause to prevent a stack of papers from toppling over. “We could also go the way of Occam and just find the previous occupants of the house, but we can save that thought for later.”

\---

“Remember to check the day before and after as well!” Jane calls out from somewhere within the archive. Will isn’t entirely sure where, as the paper seems to mess with the acoustics of the space.

He manages to find an article on the quality of the cafeteria meals which answers a few questions… but not any of the important ones. With a sigh he places the newsletter back into the stack and checks over the previous day’s issue. Which is so empty that one of the student reporters wrote an article about their pet dog.

… it’s a pretty dang cute dog…

\---

Jane snatches the dog article out of his hands and places it back into the stack.

\---

They’re onto the middle school newsletters now, which to both his and Jane’s frustration aren’t in chronological order. Thankfully, they’re printed on a weekly basis instead of daily which makes the resulting pile much smaller. “Gardening project?” he reads out from the pile of 2nd week of September newsletters he’s managed to gather up.

“No”

“Museum Field Trip?”

“No”

He flips through a few weekly newspapers where the 7th is a weekend and sets them to the side. “Interschool Music Recital?”

“No”

There’s another sheet stapled to the first which seems to be a double print to announce the sudden cancelation of the previously mentioned recital… the venue must have encountered a problem or something. “Must have sucked…” he comments before moving on.

“Oh hey, there’s an article on Miss Parker’s volunteer group~”

\---

After a little more searching, Will is about ready to give up when Jane begins cackling from her position… somewhere in the room.

“Did… did you find it?”

“Nope!” she replies, “but rejoice because I think we’re done here.” She emerges from beyond the shelves to reveal that rather than search through the newsletters she’s been taking notes in a notebook for the past few minutes. “Voila” she flourishes and flips her notes around to reveal that she’s constructed a table of events that occurred on September 7th every year going back a couple of decades, divided into middle school and high school categories.

“Ok… but that still doesn’t change the fact that we didn’t find anything…”

“Oh, my dear Watson, on the contrary we might have already seen it, we just haven’t recognized it yet.” She brushes aside the dust on a nearby surface and takes a seat beckoning Will to do the same. “You’ve been focusing on the date. But any good mystery isn’t just solved with one clue alone, every clue comes together to paint a picture of the _truth._ ” Will takes a seat as she continues to monologue “What do we know about our mystery message maker?” she questions. “They’re probably a kid or a teenager, they had to have been _here_ to carve that message in the first place which means they either were born here or moved here.”

“They might have been on vacation here?” Will interjects.

“Vacation… _here…?_ ” she shoots him an unimpressed look.

“… fair point. So, they’re a local. What next?”

In response to that Jane brandishes her notebook. “What we have here is a record of every local event on September 7th from a teens point of view. Now we need a _different perspective._ And where the two overlap, or contrast, that’s where we begin to understand what makes September 7th so special to our messenger.”

“So… your answer to not finding anything in our research… is just more research?”

“Isn’t that always the answer? With that being said! How empty is your weekend schedule looking?”

It’s finally Will’s turn to look unimpressed. “ _I live in Faraway_. How much free time do you think I have?”

\---

The week ticks by slowly as he waits for the weekend to roll around. The only other event of note (with the exception of Miss Parker briefly abducting another kid from his class) is his first Phys Ed class where he finally meets the rumored Mr Owens.

“GOOD MORNING CLASS 1E~!”

And then immediately wishes he hadn’t.

Mr Owens is a tall but not particularly bulky man, which makes William wonder how the hell he’s able to generate such a loud voice. Other than that, his brown hair is tied back in a series of messy viking braids and the breast of his red track suit is decorated with several pins that would have reminded Will of military medals… were they not all Captain Spaceboy, Pet Rock, or other retro paraphernalia. All of this combines to give the impression that Mr Owens never really grew up and should really be on their side of the gymnasium learning from a more respectable adult.

With the fall sports season two months away, there’s no rush for them to start building upon their sports skills. So, their first lesson of the term is a simple 3K run outside around the field. To get everyone settled back into exercising and check up on everyone’s endurance.

Mr Owen’s actual choice of words are of a significantly lower quality… William suddenly realizes why Mr Owens is so popular with the boys.

\---

“So, you’re William, right?”

Despite what he expected… Mr Owens doesn’t send them all on a 3K run and then depart to perform some vague and indistinct responsibilities as a gym teacher. Instead, he runs alongside the class and encourages the students to pace themselves, but to be willing to persevere and improve.

“Take your time” he says with a beaming grin. “It’s hard to talk and jog at the same time isn’t it~”

Oh right… “No- I mean yes-” William glances back at the pack of runners containing the majority of the class, spots Jane struggling at the back, and decides he can slow down a little. “Yeah, I’m William. No, I’m not out of breath… I can talk.”

Mr Owens shines another of his bright smiles “You’re new in town right~? how are you enjoying it here.”

“It’s nice… pretty quiet which is a lot better than where I lived before, I like it here.”

“That’s great!” Mr Owens says and delivers yet another one of his floodlight smiles “Not many people move here, and the people who do, end up complaining that not much happens around here. They’re not wrong” he jokes.

“Well… I’ve been finding ways to keep myself entertained.” Will returns, his and Jane’s planned weekend excursion coming to mind.

“That’s great!”

… does… does this man ever stop smiling???

\---

They talk more… well Mr Owens talks more, while William mostly listens. Mr Owens is just as inquisitive as his classmates were in the first couple of days, but unlike them he doesn’t seem put off or offended when he doesn’t elaborate much on his last school or hobbies… mostly because there’s not much to elaborate on in the first place.

“Do you play any sports?” Mr Owens asks him.

“No, I’m not that athletic…”

“Really…?” this time it’s Mr Owens turn to glance back towards the main pack of students…

When did they get that far back…?

“You don’t have to be humble you know.”

“I…” William considers “I like the outdoors… I walk around a lot, go on hikes… that sort of thing…”

“I see, must have helped you build up some pretty impressive stamina~”

“Yeah… I guess…”

“Well, I won’t force you, but I think you should sign up for some sports this coming season. We could always use more athletes, it’ll be fun.”

“… Maybe… I’ll think about it.”

\---

The class finishes up their run two thirds of the way through the period which surprises William. Usually, 3K runs took an entire period… but perhaps there’s some sense in Mr Owens methods… sadly because of a stopwatch malfunction… specifically that Mr Owens didn’t start it in the first place, none of them receive any times.

“That’s OK, what’s important isn’t how fast you finished! it’s that none of you gave up! And all of you pushed yourselves a little bit further today~!”

Mr Owens and his endless positivity leads them through some warm down stretches before they’re all allowed to spread out and do their own thing. The students who are part of sports teams break off into their own circles and run a few practice drills, while the students who aren’t, gather around the drinking fountain to refill their bottles and rehydrate.

He and Jane falls into the latter group, though Jane seems to be in no condition to converse, drinking almost a full bottle of water and dumping several more over herself to cool down. “Other people need water too Goodman!” someone in the line behind her calls out, but she just sticks her tongue out at them. Through the wide-open double doors of the gymnasium William watches Mr Owens inside giving tips to some basketball players, before shooting a few hoops himself.

“I saw you talking with Mr Owens during the run” Jane says as she finally finishes draining the town’s water reservoir and takes a seat on the grass next to Will.

“He’s really loud…”

“I’m told that’s what makes him popular?”

“Well, not to me…”

\---

The following day William is walking to school, reading the Captain Spaceboy comic he recently purchased from HOBBEEZ when someone calls out from behind him.

“Hey! Will” Mr Owens slows his run down to a light jog alongside William’s walking pace and beams his signature smile. “Fancy seeing you here, you headed to school?”

William silently laments his peaceful morning walks while he greets Mr Owens.

\---

On Friday Jane peers down into the deep square shaped hole in the grass in front of Will’s house. There was an ancient FOR SALE sign stabbed into the earth there, but with the work on Will’s house finally complete, it appears that one of the workers saw fit to remove it on the way out. The sign has been standing tall in its long and arduous vigil for decades, she’s walked by that sign almost every week on her way to the park. And now with its work finally complete, it has departed for better pastures (to be impaled into). The square shaped hole will eventually crumble at the edges and fill in, and then the sign and its traces will be truly gone.

Farewell old friend.

“… What are you doing.” Will calls out from his front doorstep.

“I nearly twisted my foot on that bloody hole in your lawn!” She calls out angrily while rubbing her ankle. “You should really get that filled in.” she’s slightly worried it will start to swell but it’s fine enough for her to trot up and into Will’s house, so she doesn’t ask for ice.

“yeah, we should…” he says as he closes the door behind them.

The subject of today’s afterschool meeting is organizing a trip to the public library. Taking a page out of William’s Mother’s book, Jane lays out a map of Faraway and places a finger over the public library on the other side of town. “The library is an hour’s walk away if you’re athletic which neither of us are” she begins, eliciting a huff from Will who returns from the kitchen with two cups of tea. “So instead, I propose we take the public bus. The 011 bus stops right outside the library and we can board at the bus stop near my house. The fare will be $2.40 per person one way, which means $4.80 per round trip for each of us.”

…

At this point Will takes a loud sip from his tea, and scans over the map in silence… Jane has been in Will’s presence long enough to know not to interrupt him, so she grabs her cup and blows on it a couple of times before taking a sip.

“I’ll take the train.” He says after a long while.

Will runs his finger along the train tracks that pass right through the middle of town and continue onwards off the map. There’s a train station not far from Othermart, and a train station a block away from the library. It’s doable but…

“Why the train? The bus stops are closer.”

“…

Can’t pay the bus fare” he says after a pause.

“What…? Wait, what happened to the money that Miss Parker gave you?”

“Spent it already, posters for my room” William replies with a half-hearted shrug. “I don’t get an allowance from my mom… and I don’t really feel like asking her for money suddenly…”

But Will’s reasoning makes even less sense “How are you going to pay the train fare then? Which I should also add is almost twice as much as the bus fare.”

At that Will just holds a finger up and hops up from the couch. After a short wait, Jane hears the thump of footsteps as he returns from his room upstairs placing a small plastic card on the table.

It’s a train pass… not simply for Faraway either… the pass is valid on every stop on the train line all the way to the neighboring city. Jane’s eyes widen even further when the date printed on the card indicates that the pass is valid for an entire year, which makes it a **_very_** _expensive_ train pass.

“Where… where did you get this…?” she asks, picking up the card and marveling at it.

“Mom got it for me… didn’t realize the school was in walking distance.” Walking distance was a bit of an overstatement. Rather than that, Jane supposes that Mrs Sullivan didn’t expect Will was willing to wake up half an hour after sunrise and walk all the way to school. but that’s not the point she chooses to pursue.

“Why did she get you a city pass then?”

At that question, Will takes another sip of his tea, curling into the couch slightly at the same time…

“She said… it was so I could visit my old classmates if I ever wanted to.”

“… Oh, that’s nice…”

“Mhm… but I don’t, so… it’s just been gathering dust all this time…”

Jane takes a moment to mull over his suggestion.

“I don’t have any cash to pay the bus fare and I don’t want you to pay for me” Will argues. “The train pass is only for one person, so I can’t pay for your train fare, which like you said is double the bus fare, and I don’t want you to have to buy an expensive train ticket… So it’s simple, I take the train, you take the bus. We can meet up at the library in the morning, do our research, and go home the same way.

It’s only logical” he finishes.

“only logical…” she repeats. After a brief moment more consideration Jane agrees “Ok we’ll go with that then, what time do you wanna meet up?”

Thankfully, the bus schedule that Jane brought along also has train timetables on the other side so the two of them are able to agree on a 10AM meetup time and decide what busses and trains to catch in regard to that. All that’s left is to sort out lunch plans, which takes them less than a minute as they both settle on packing their own lunchboxes in the morning and ~~critiquing~~ sharing with each other at the library.

They spend the rest of the afternoon working on various pieces of homework and assignments while a lazy late summer wind blows in from the back yard.

\---

The public library is a large brickwork building attached to a theatre and the town hall, all in varying states of age and aesthetic, truly an architectural Frankenstein. The size the whole complex speaks of a time when people perhaps had hope for this town to become more than some edge of county stopover, and so built their local symbols to match, hoping that the town and population would “grow into it” so to speak.

It did not. But having an oversized library was better than having no library. The extra floor space allowed the library to have an entire level dedicated to archived newspapers as well, so perhaps there was some sense in building big after all.

“Aren’t you hot in that…?” is Jane’s first comment in lieu of greeting.

Summer had ended, but the weather hasn’t escaped its warm grip. The sun shines down through a cloudless sky, the light breeze doing nothing to alleviate the temperature.

But despite this William is waiting outside the library, the sharp sunbeams beating down overhead, wearing a hoodie jacket, baggy shirt, and close-fitting undershirt, three-piece ensemble. The multiple layers visible in progressively descending collars. With the possibility of a fourth singlet vest hidden underneath. She feels hot just looking at him.

“I get cold easily” is his reply before he picks his bag up off of the pavement and moves to navigate inside.

\---

Rather than immediately dive into their research, Jane takes the time to show Will around. The library _is_ large, and Will has a terrible sense of direction on most days so the two of them briefly peruse through the fiction, non-fiction, computer labs, and audio-visual section, pausing in each to briefly scan the titles and get a sense of both the space and the breadth of resources available. Their only other stop is the front desk so Will can inquire into the process of receiving a library card.

He comes away with a printed form that he’ll “fill in with his Mother later” which is folded and stashed into a pocket.

Only then do they approach the archives floor where almost every local newspaper is preserved and bound into such large covers that it takes a full underarm carry to transfer each one to the large reading desks on the floor. A few librarians glance curiously over to the pair and one almost approaches them. But Jane makes eye contact with the tall thin almost spidery woman and waves, which seems to repel her. “Family friend” she supplies to Will.

After that no other adults bother them. Each collection is bound and organized by year, and they’re only interested in two maybe three days out of the full 365. But the newspapers cover a wide breadth of subjects, and they’re looking for something that they themselves aren’t aware of what section it would be printed under.

What results is an hours long slog. Jane skims most articles in each paper providing a brief summation while Will writes up points in her notebook, he’s a surprisingly fast writer so the notes are clean organized and live up to her high standards which speeds up the process a great deal. And while she reviews each batch of notes to ensure that Will hasn’t missed any details (he doesn’t) he clears the desk to make room for the next set of bound papers.

“We should take a break for lunch” Will interrupts when he shifts over the tome that contains newspapers from 14 years ago.

“… yeah, we should…” she agrees but makes no move to stand up. “let me finish reading this paper and we can stop.”

“Food’s not allowed out in here is it?” Will asks, and then scans around to spot a no food or drink sign stuck to an opposite shelf. “I’ll go find us a spot outside to sit and eat while you finish up here?”

“mhm… yeah that sounds like a good idea” she takes her glasses off to wipe of some of the dirt and by the time she replaces them, Will is gone.

\---

Will’s absence means that it takes her slightly longer to take notes, but she finishes up the last sentence and sets the newspapers aside. She hails one of the librarians as she’s leaving and informs them that she and her friend will be taking a break for lunch but will be back to continue reading so the newspapers can be left on the desk.

“It’s nice to see kids taking their studies seriously” the librarian complements while promising to reserve their reading stack.

When she exits the library, she doesn’t immediately see Will, but after a bit of searching she spots his obnoxiously irremovable hoodie seated at the outdoor section of a bistro.

“Are we allowed to sit here?” she says over the railing that divides the seating from the sidewalk.

“They won’t mind” is Will’s reply. The bistro is mostly empty, most people’s lunch hour having been and gone. He holds up a paper cup of steaming hot something and shifts the other cup on the table over to the opposite seat.

Jane sits down at the table and sips from what she expects to be tea but is surprised when the cup is filled with sugary sweat hot chocolate instead. “Thought we might need the sugar.”

“Good idea.” Driving away thoughts of economic forecasts and changes to local council regulations that fill her notes, Jane fishes a pair of lunchboxes out of her bag and sets it on the table. She opens up each to reveal a spread of cut sushi, mostly made with canned ingredients to reduce the chance of food poisoning. “What did you bring?” she asks while beaming proudly.

Will picks up a piece of sushi and munches down on it while he fishes his own lunchbox out of his bag. Jane watches with apprehension as Will pulls out several containers worth of… ingredients? There’s sliced vegetables, pottles of sauces, bread buns, some kind of minced meat mixture.

A short while later Jane stares down at a full _burger_ lain down on a paper napkin with a second one being assembled in short order.

“… whoa… how did you pack an entire burger- Wait! is that safe to eat!?” she questions as she pokes at a pair of icepacks that were keeping the patties refrigerated in Will’s bag.

“Yeah, don’t worry, the patties are carne apache. It’s safe to eat.”

“carne apache…?”

“yeah, it’s like ceviche or steak tartare… I cooked a steak, minced it, refrigerated it, marinated it in lime juice and some other stuff which kills off the bacteria, and it’s been kept cold in my bag this whole time. So, it should be pretty safe.” Will finishes assembling his burger and takes a large bite of it while Jane stares on in amazement.

She looks down at her own burger, anyone would be surprised to find that neither of them bought it from the bistro inside.

“… sorry I should have checked with you first.” Will murmurs. “You don’t have to eat if you’re worried… You can have your sushi and I’ll finish both burgers…”

“Oh! No, don’t worry I’ll have some!” She picks up her burger and takes a bite. With the patty being marinated in lime juice, the burger itself has a tangy freshness to it that one wouldn’t usually expect. “I’m impressed” she concedes after a few more bites, picking up a couple of pieces of her sushi for comparison. “I was half expecting you to bring something like… hotdogs…” though admittedly a hamburger isn’t that far off from her guess.

“My old school didn’t have a cafeteria, so had to make my own lunches” he picks up a couple of pieces of sushi and bites into them. Before dipping a piece into some leftover mayo. “Huh, you should try this.” He suggests, moving the pottle across the table.

Her sushi isn’t exactly traditional with all it’s canned ingredients, so there’s no real harm in offending the sushi gods further and dipping it into mayo. Canned tuna and mayo are a natural match after all.

She looks down at the rest of the meal, Carne apache burger, sushi in mayo, and hot chocolate to wash it down. “this is such a weird spread of food…”

“s’not bad though…”

“yeah” she agrees, “it’s pretty great.”

\---

“So, did anything catch your eye in the newspapers?” Will asks when they’re halfway through everything.

“… No” she sadly answers. “we’re back about 14 years, any further and we’re talking about stuff that happened before we were born. Rather than go back any further, it might be worth it to start again and check over the full week… sometimes newspapers take a few days to print an article on big events, if something important happened on the 7th, then it might not be an article written on it until two or three days later…” she sighs at the prospect of more reading.

She hands her notes over and Will wipes his fingers before flipping through the pages.

Jane continues her meal while he combs over the notes. When Will finally sets down the notebook and flips it back around, Jane’s half of the table is basically empty “… What was this obituary…?”

She looks down at the note in particular. There were a handful of obituaries printed on the 7th, but the next day there was only one. She rattles her brain struggling to remember “uhh… something Smith. Can’t remember the name, wasn’t much info either… probably just someone’s grandmother” she shrugs.

“I see…” Will resumes his meal, swallowing food with haste now that he’s the only one eating. Jane meanwhile packs up all their supplies and tosses all their rubbish into a nearby bin.

\---

The pile of archived newspapers is exactly where Jane left them, just as the librarian promised. She makes a show of cracking her knuckles psyching herself at the prospect of tackling the daunting task of returning to the beginning of the pile and widening their search range.

But William takes a seat, lays down her notebook on the reading desk, and flips through the open issue. “You said, that where the two perspectives overlap, that’s where we’ll find the truth… right?”

She nods and takes a seat next to Will as he’s flipping through the issues of the Faraway Times from 14 years ago. He reaches the paper published on the 7th of September and scans the pages before flipping forward to the next issue on the 8th. He pauses on the section specified in Jane’s notes.

“Mari Smith, avid musician, baker, and attended flower arranging classes. Died the night before last, she will be missed.” He reads out… there’s not much else in there. The obituaries in the paper are short and to the point. Everyone knows everyone else in town so there’s little need to include details.

Will reads over the few lines again and again. Music, baking and flower arranging sound like standard grandmother hobbies. But…

He flips to the front of the notes and reads over the table they constructed in the school archive rooms…

“Interschool… Music… Recital…”

“… Canceled” the both of them whisper at the same time.

“What… what if Mari was a high school student…” Will whispers… “Not a grandmother, someone’s _daughter._ ”

“If she was a performer at the recital… and she suddenly died…” Jane continues.

“Then the organizers might have _cancelled the recital out of respect_.”

“If she died late at the night of the 6th, which caused the recital on the night of the 7th to be cancelled, and it was only announced in the newspaper on the 8th!”

“Then maybe someone who knew her, _who was grieving for her_ , were the ones who left behind the message!” They both shout aloud earning a harsh hush from a passing librarian.

“The piano…” Will remembers after they both calm down.

“In your study?”

“She was a musician… if she was a performer… maybe… she was a _pianist”_ Will’s voice is quiet as he runs a finger over the name Mari Smith again. “ _Maybe that piano really is haunted… **”**_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I wanna take a moment to thank everyone that left kudos over the past couple of chapters as well as the handful that left comments. It's really, really, REALLY, encouraging and I'm honestly very touched that people are willing to read my first work on this site. I just wanted to acknowledge everyone's support.
> 
> That being said, I'm making a decision that I wont be replying to any comments. the specific reason for this is that I feel that any input i have as a writer should really be saved until everything is completed. without giving too much away, there's plenty of details that i've written in that will be returning in future and I'm honestly very scared that if i interact too much with readers, i'll give too much away. Beyond just writing this fic, i want people to "experience" this fic, as ominous as that sounds. so again, i wont be responding to any comments until things are wrapping up. of course feel free to continue leaving kudos, comments or whatever support you think I deserve, I do read them and they give me great joy and motivation to continue churning out chapters.
> 
> Speaking of chapters, you might notice that i've set the total chapters in the fic to 9. in addition to this chapter i've also been establishing a rough plan of where the story is going to go, and putting it all down in my personal notes rather than trying to keep it all in my head. 9 chapters is what my notes eventually ironed out to so 9 chapters is going to be my goal for now. that means that as of posting this chapter we're a little under 1/3rd of the way through (Considering the prologue was so short) and I hope you'll stick with me for the next 2/3rds.
> 
> lastly i'm not entirely sure how updates/notifications on this site work. but if you've been getting notifications that the fic has updated but you check and it hasn't then it's probably just me updating the previous chapters. The truth is that this fic is unbeta'd and i'm not perfect so occasionally i forget to put in/remember i need to put in certain details in previous chapters. i'll of course limit my chapter revisions to whenever i post a new chapter so people aren't getting notified of an update when in reality the next chapter is still a day or two away.
> 
> again i really wanted to thank everyone for the support, if you really like this fic, then I post previews of WIP chapters as well as other OMORI content, shitposts, and just literary stuff in general, on my Tumblr which you can find [here](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/raynydaystorytime).


	4. The Second Clue, Name

“We were out of bread…” Will explains.

“You were out of bread…?” Jane questions.

“And other stuff…” Will is squatting on the sidewalk outside of Othermart like some sort of delinquent. There’s a vintage boombox outside of HOBBEEZ that he saw the clerk set out. The sounds of scratchy vintage cassette tracks fill the Sunday morning air.

“So why aren’t you inside buying it?”

“My Mother is in there” he shrugs “I don’t need to help her.”

Jane turns back towards the entrance of the supermarket where an older gentleman in a tan bucket hat is waiting for her. “School friend!” she calls out towards him. The man responds with a thumbs up and a wave before heading into the store.

“Your dad?”

“Yeah” she confirms before squatting down on the sidewalk next to Will.

Their first library trip was a couple of weeks ago, and despite remaining till near sundown to continue their research as well as making several shorter trips afterschool to chase up a few more leads, there was no more probable connection to the stump in Will’s back yard than Mari Smith.

But past that, their research had slowed down. School is back into full swing, so the both of them have homework and projects to deal with. Their afterschool meetings have turned into study sessions.

Jane takes her studies seriously so Will has been roped into becoming her study buddy. He doesn’t mind, he’s no stranger to studying and while memorization seems to be more of Jane’s specialty, his comprehension is good enough that most of the time Jane is the one asking him for help clarifying concepts.

They talk about tests among other things, upcoming school projects, rumors about teachers, gossip about classmates. Jane has to pause every time she mentions a new classmate to describe their appearance since Will’s quizzical expression indicates that he hasn’t committed their names to memory.

After a few minutes of meaningless conversation, the clack of heels on footpath comes up from behind the pair.

“One of your classmates Will?”

“Yeah”

Will springs up and moves to take two of the three shopping bags his mother carries while Jane scrambles to introduce herself. “I’m Jane Goodman, I’ve been helping Will settle in at school.”

“We’re friends” Will quips.

“Oh, I should thank you then.” Mrs Sullivan offers her hand and Jane shakes it. “Anne Sullivan, I’m Will’s mother, I’m sure Will’s talked about me.”

Unlike what one might expect from a woman who leaves early in the morning and doesn’t return home until after dark, Anne Sullivan isn’t dressed in a business suit, instead sporting a blouse and clean jeans combo, due to it being the weekend. But some traces of her work habits persist. Her hair is neatly styled in long curls, her leather low heeled shoes have the unmistakable shine of formalwear and her glossy red lips turn up in a smile as her warm hazel eyes crinkle at the edges.

Will shoots Jane a pleading look from his position behind his mother, and he’s relived when she allows the little fib and doesn’t mention Will’s relative silence on the topic.

“There’s no need to thank me” Jane replies “Will has been helping me study, so really I’m the one who should be grateful.”

At the compliment Mrs Sullivan pats Will’s hair with her free hand “Look at you, making friends.”

“Ugh, shouldn’t we get going?” Will complains as he twists away in embarrassment from his mother’s affection.

She smiles softly and pulls her hand away “You’re right” she says, “there’s cold groceries we need to pack in the fridge.”

Without any free hands Will just nods at Jane and begins walking away eliciting a sigh from his mother. “He used to be such a sweet child” she comments wistfully. “It was nice meeting you Jane; will you be alright on your own?”

“Oh, don’t worry, my dad is inside.”

“Alright, I won’t keep you from him any longer… again, thank you for being Will’s friend” and with that Mrs Sullivan departs to catch up with her son who is already waiting at the corner of the next street.

Jane chuckles a little at Will’s bashful display before heading inside to find her father.

\---

“Oh no…” Mr Owens laments, during his jog and William’s walk, to school.

William raises an eyebrow from behind his comic. It’s one of the newer Captain Spaceboy issues from his own collection rather than one he bought from HOBBEEZ. Mr Owens frowns as he reads the title from in front of William while mock jogging backwards.

“I thought I had found an ally… but it turns out you’re just another remake fan.” He sighs dramatically.

“There’s nothing wrong with the remakes…? I like both the originals and the remakes, it’s just that it’s harder to find original comics floating around.”

“But they completely ruined Captain Spaceboy’s character in the remakes! They made him all dark and broody and stuff.”

He really shouldn’t be getting into this argument but… “That’s just your nostalgia talking. Old Captain Spaceboy’s appeal is that he’s a teenager, Captain Spaceboy tackles issues that the adults around him struggle with and he comes out on top every time because the problems that the adults struggle with are actually much simpler than they make them out to be. The only thing that’s stopping them from solving their own issues is their reluctance to get involved in the first place, a problem that Captain Spaceboy and his band of space pirates don’t have.”

He closes the comic book so he can meet Mr Owen’s eyes and make sure he’s paying attention. “But that only works in a simplified world. A world with only nine planets and problems to match. The reboot expands the journeys of the space pirates to the entire galaxy, but also expands the range of problems they face. So naturally Captain Spaceboy has to also become more competent. Not everything in the reboot can be solved with youthful pluck.”

“Yeah, but that’s not fun” Mr Owens rebuts “Having a bigger world is nice and all, but not if it comes at the cost of Captain’s Spaceboy’s character.”

“And that’s where you’re wrong” William flips to a page in his comic, an illustration of the new Captain Spaceboy and his ship the Mercury Retrograde sailing amongst a fleet of andromedan space whales. “Captain Spaceboy is still a teenager. Space Elves live a long time after all… but that’s not the point. You’re mistaking youth for naivety, Captain Spaceboy is still an idealistic character, he just has to be smart about it now. The appeal of the original Captain Spaceboy is that he’s fun and relatable, but the appeal of the new Captain Spaceboy is that he’s a competent teenager that kids can aspire to be like. He’s not edgy and dark, he’s cool and smart. Old Captain Spaceboy overcomes problems because he’s a teenager, new Captain Spaceboy solves problems _despite_ being a teenager. Don't underestimate teens.”

Mr Owens slows to a stop and stares at him, for a moment William thinks he’s missed something “… What?”

“No just” Mr Owens’ face lights up into his signature smile “I’ve never seen you talk so much.”

In response William scowls slightly and returns to his previous page.

“You know you should meet my little sister Sally.”

“You have a little sister?”

“Yeah, I think the two of you would be friends, she’s a big fan of the remakes as well. She’s still in middle school though.” Mr Owens pauses to scratch the back of his head “… It’s still a while away but I hope you’ll look after her for me when she moves up to high school.”

“I mean… sure… but can’t you do that yourself? You’re her big brother after all.”

“Yeah, but I’m not supposed to play favorites with students.”

At that, William tilts his head in thought “That’s stupid…”

“I know but that’s the rules…”

“No, I mean like… you’re already playing favorites, you give tips to all the athletes… and then there’s… this…” he gestures around referring to their morning walks. “If having favorites was a problem, I’m sure someone would have told you off for it by now.”

“Yeah but, it’s different… Sally’s my little sister.”

“It’s not unfair if everyone is your favorite, even if Sally is a little more special than everyone else… there’s no need to overthink it, just be like old Captain Spaceboy, if you mess up just fix things after.” William resumes walking past Mr Owens who seems to be caught off guard by his encouragement. “And besides… she’s your sister… if you’re not going to be there for her, then who else?”

“You know Will… you’re a pretty smart kid” Mr Owens says as he catches back up. William is about to brush off his complement when his comic is suddenly snatched out of his hands. Mr Owens is jogging halfway down the street before he can complain.

“What the are you doing.”

“Playing favorites~!” he calls out from the next street corner. “I’m saving you from this tasteless comic book and encouraging you to exercise at the same time!”

He doesn’t chase after him, not that morning at least. But the next day when Mr Owens brings up old arcade games and insists that King Crawler is the best one before jogging off… he still doesn’t chase after him.

“Jackson is scarier than Frankie” is his choice of debate next morning and Will has to pause to stow his Frankie Vs Jackson comic in his bag before sprinting after Mr Owens to correct him.

\---

The following week, they have their first batch of tests, a Math and Science test on the same day as well as an English essay due in the afternoon. Jane sighs as Will in the seat next to her furiously scribbles away at his pad of refill paper.

“Class starts in 15 minutes… shouldn’t you have… I don’t know, done that earlier…?”

“… I just need to edit everything.”

Judging from the amount of blank space on the page… he might have a little more than editing to do… but Jane doesn’t bring that up… it’s not like there’s anything that she can do to help… at the very least she can hope Will learns his lesson and prepares better next time.

When the bell rings, Will slumps forward onto the desk. Coming to the same conclusion as Jane, he stretches back upright before packing the sheets of paper away.

\---

Despite Will’s mishap in the morning, the tests go relatively well… Jane finishes early, even after double checking all of her answers, and sets her pen down. Will is still writing but there’s no stress or anxiety in his expression nor body language so she takes that as a good sign.

Will sets his pen down a quarter of an hour later before glancing around the room. He and Jane share a quick grin and the both of them go back to checking over their tests with what little remains of the period.

\---

“William? Could you stay behind for a bit after class?” Miss Grant asks him during the last period of the day, after she finishes writing a batch of practice questions on the board. “It won’t be long.”

William suddenly snaps to attention, sparing a glance at Jane who is busy copying down the practice problems, before answering “Oh… um… alright.”

Miss Grant returns to her desk. Jane leans over from the side “I’ll wait for you outside?”

“… you don’t have to.”

But in response Jane just shrugs “Not like I have places to be…”

True to Miss Grant’s word, Will isn’t held back for long. Less than 10 minutes after the end of class, Will emerges from the classroom to find Jane sitting in the hallway reading a book.

“That was quick.”

“Mhmm…” is Will’s only reply.

\---

“Where’s Will? Don’t you two usually eat together?” Miss Parker inquires one lunchtime.

Will had dashed off somewhere at the start of lunch without a word, Jane had lost him in the ensuing mass of students and when she herself arrived at the cafeteria Will was nowhere to be seen. “We don’t always hang out. Sometimes Will does stuff on his own…” she shrugs. Maybe he was off making new friends…

…

Fat chance of that…

“What are you doing here though Miss Parker?”

“Teachers are allowed to eat in the cafeteria” Miss Parker replies, setting down her lunch tray opposite Jane’s spot. “That and I was hoping to talk to you and Will. But I’ll save it for when I’ve got the both of you in my clutches~” a forkful of her lunch vanishes into her grinning maw. “ _Gosh, I miss Hero’s cooking_.” She murmurs.

But after a brief pause Miss Parker speaks up again. “I can tell it's bothering you, so let me give you some advice.” Jane feels her features droop, unaware that her face had stiffened in the first place, at Miss Parker’s unusually poignant tone.

“There are people who want to be left alone, that’s just who they are. I have this one friend… well, two friends… who are like that. They’re not very social, and they’re both busy people. I don’t see them all that often and we meet up like… once a year. that doesn’t make us not friends or less friends.

_But here’s the catch._

People can be left alone if they want to be, _but no one should be alone if they’re lonely…_ understand?”

Jane lets the words sink in… slowly… and then she springs into action scooping the remains of her lunch into her mouth and standing up. “Shan- _mph_ -ks Mss P-”

Thankfully, she doesn’t need to continue as Miss Parker waves her off “Just go before you choke~!”

“And remember!” Miss Parker calls out as Jane is dashing out of the cafeteria, ignoring all the attention she’s drawing “I’m going to hunt the both of you down later! You better watch out~!”

\---

Will sits nestled in the back corner of the library, munching on his packed lunch of dry chicken nuggets and a simple salad, both sans sauces and dressing. He knows the librarian doesn’t check back here, but on the off chance he’s found he can at least claim some innocence in the fact that his choice of meal isn’t likely to stain the books.

He picks at his lunch with a fork in his right, while he flips through the yearbook in his lap with his left. Searching for more traces of the girl named Mari Smith. There’s a listing of participants in the school’s extracurricular music program where he finds her name under the pianist section which likely confirms his theory about the recital.

“You’re not allowed to eat in here” Jane suddenly interjects from around the corner, causing him to nearly choke on his current mouthful. He swallows it down and is about to reply when he realizes that he’s not really sure what to say.

Jane watches him gape for a bit, a smug expression on her face, before nudging him over and plopping down in their little corner. “I assume you’re not doing research for our next project?” she asks peering at the yearbook in his lap, prompting Will to slowly shake his head.

Jane sighs “Alright, let’s hear it.”

“What…?”

“ _Present your thesis_. You’ve obviously been looking into Mari Smith, so let’s hear what you’ve found.”

Will pulls himself back together and flips back towards the front of the yearbook. He opens the page to reveal a set of class photos, he places his finger underneath a face in the frame and moves the book over so that Jane can get a closer look.

“Is that her…?”

“Yeah”

Mari Smith is a seemingly plain girl. Her hair is styled neatly, straight and black, and her choice of clothes for that day are monochrome, a degree more formal than most of her classmates. But unlike the rest of her appearance, almost clashing with it in fact, is her warm and gentle smile that illuminates her whole face. Jane was sure even without Will’s direction that Mari would be the first focus of her attention.

“This was her first year of high school, a year before she passed away. I didn’t find her in the next years yearbook though.”

“Makes sense” Jane contributes “School photos aren’t till the end of the year.”

“With that in mind” Will continues “She died in her second year of high school so that means she was either 15 or 16 years old.”

Jane makes a contemplative hum “I feel sorry for her family.”

“Yeah… I looked though the names in the rest of the book as well as a few other yearbooks, there was one or two other kids with the surname Smith, but none of them looked similar to her so I don’t think she had any siblings.”

“So, do you think her parents left the message?”

“It’s possible, but like you said I don’t think an adult left it. it might have been one of her classmates.”

“Mhmm… what about the piano?”

At that Will flips forward in the yearbook towards the extracurriculars section, there’s another photo here of Mari along with the other students involved in the music program “I was right, she was a pianist. Which means that my house was likely hers… her parents must have moved away and left the piano behind because it had too many memories…”

“Or it was just too hard to take with them.”

“That… was probably also a factor yeah…”

“Alright… well…” Jane picks the yearbook out of Will’s lap and sets it in her own before flipping through it. “What now?”

“Well… I’m not sure… there were a couple of leads to follow up on…” Will pulls his schoolbag out from behind him and retrieves a folded sheet of paper from the front pocket “There weren’t any yearbooks for the middle school across the street.”

“No, they only print out class photos and those get mailed straight to the families.”

“So, there’s no records of Mari before she entered high school in the library. Which is why I went back to the newspaper archives, and looked through the years that she would have been in middle school.” He unfolds the paper to reveal a photocopied newsletter.

The main feature is an article on a younger Mari Smith dated some time in December of her second year in middle school. A large photo takes up most of the page and has her being awarded a softball trophy at a statewide award ceremony, apparently one of the youngest recipients of the award. The article goes on to list some of her achievements and praise her future prospects. Jane reads over the article and flips through the yearbook to locate the sports section.

“Don’t bother, she’s not in there…”

“She stopped playing…?”

“Through the school at least. Are there any sports clubs in town?”

“No, I’m pretty sure Faraway High has the only sports field around.”

“Then she stopped playing altogether.”

“Maybe piano was more important to her?” done with the yearbook, Jane hands it back to Will “It’s honestly impressive that after being called a softball prodigy she could swap over to piano and be good enough to perform at the school recital.”

“Since her family moved away, talking to her former classmates are probably our best shot. Which reminds me!” Will takes back the yearbook and flips back forward to Mari’s class photo. He points to a spikey haired teenager on the other side of the photo. “Look familiar…?”

Jane peers closely at the face. “No way…” she reads over the names at the bottom of the photo “… Mr Owens!? But, wait… I’m pretty sure his first name isn’t Henry…?”

“It’s not” William reaches up to the shelf next to him to pull out another yearbook, a few years ahead, and opens it up to another set of class photos “Kelsey Owens… I think this is him…”

The dopey look on this kid’s face is certainly a better match, Jane agrees. “So Mr Owens has an older brother?”

“I knew he had a younger sister, but I didn’t realize he was a middle child.”

“Huh when did you find that out…?”

“Mr Owens…” he pauses to consider his wording “bothers me on my way to school…”

“Huh… That sounds… wait what?”

“He goes jogging in the morning, and I walk to school early… so we bump into each other more often than not. We talk… mostly about his terrible taste in horror movies.”

“… and I repeat… _what_?”

Desperate to change the subject Will flips to the next page “Also, guess who else I found…”

Jane squints suspiciously at Will before turning her attention to the page… she spends less than a second scanning before she finds a girl with bubblegum pink hair glaring at the camera. Next to her is a brunette with a familiar pair of red rimmed glasses, also glaring at the camera.

“Holy shit” Jane exclaims before bursting out into laughter and getting them both kicked out of the library.

\---

“Why didn’t you tell me about all this stuff you were researching?” Jane asks him as they sit on the swing set at the park after school. “I could have helped.”

Will toes at the ground. “I just kind of assumed…”

“Assumed what?” The creak of the swing set as Jane rocks back and forth punctuates their conversation.

“A lot of things really… I thought that, you know… _that was it_ … we found Mari’s obituary in the paper, the message was in her back yard, it was obviously a memorial to her… I mean… that _is_ it. There’s really nothing more than that.”

“Then why did you keep looking? And why didn’t you tell me?” there’s no hostility in her voice, just confusion.

“I just… wanted to know her better” Mari had lived in the same house as him, the photo in the yearbook was her first year of highschool, and she was important enough to someone that they etched her death date into her abandoned home. “And… I thought studying was more important to you.”

“I mean… you’re not wrong” she sheepishly replies. “But that doesn’t mean I couldn’t have helped, or that I’m not also interested in learning about Mari.”

“… Are you?”

“Yeah” she says, smiling genuinely. “In fact, lets go right now.” Jane uses the momentum from her forward swing to hop up to her feet before wheeling around and beckoning Will up.

\---

The graveyard is quiet.

But… it’s not eerie or ominous. The evening sun falls upon rows upon rows of well-kept graves. There are flowers, photos, and gifts adorning almost every one of them.

“Where do we start?”

Jane shrugs “The graves aren’t sorted or anything. Nothing else to do but to check them one by one.”

“I’ll start over there…?”

Jane nods and makes her way over in the opposite direction.

\---

After about half an hour, William manages to find her grave near the edge of the eastern section of the graveyard, a singular ray of sun shines through the leaves overhead almost perfectly illuminating the grave. He brushes a hand over the engraved stone, a little disbelieving that he actually managed to find it.

_Mari Smith_

_XXXX-XXXX_

_Our dearest Mari_

_The sun shined brighter when she was here._

It occurs to him… how similar the gravestone and the stump in his yard are. One message carved into a rock meant to last forever, and another carved into the remains of a once living tree. He offhandedly wonders, which is the better memorial.

He looks around for Jane but doesn’t spot her. It would be rude to call out in a place like this. So, he memorizes the placement of the location before setting out to find her.

\---

He finds Jane sitting cross legged in front of a different grave in another section of the graveyard on the other side of the church.

At first, he’s not sure whether or not to approach. But she notices him staring in the distance and waves him over before dusting her pants off and stretching her shoulders.

Cautiously Will approaches… at first, he tries not to interrupt the moment Jane was so clearly having, but curiosity gets the better of him and he glances at the gravestone.

His blood chills slightly when he reads the name on the gravestone and realizes…

_Lynda Goodman_

_XXXX-XXXX_

_Loving wife and mother_

_Brilliance tragically taken from us._

“She was a history professor… she gave lectures at the university.” Jane explains when she notices the look on his face. “She wanted to be a detective like in the novels… but she couldn’t handle looking at blood, so she settled on the next best thing… history apparently.”

“I’m sorry for your loss” is all he can offer.

“Its ok… it was a while ago… I was pretty young… so it… it doesn’t hurt as much anymore. Dad took it hard though, had to go live at my uncles and aunt’s house for a few months. They still come over sometimes and help with the housework” Jane stands up and claps her hands together in a quick final prayer before turning to Will.

He should let the subject drop but… “How… did she… I mean, I don’t want to pry-”

“She had a bad heart…” Jane answers, putting an end to his floundering. “Always did, ever since she was young… we knew it was coming, but… we’d always hoped a transplant would come through.”

A moment of silence passes as Will offers his own silent prayer at the grave… “… My dad left us… me and mom.”

Jane didn’t ask, Jane has never asked anything, never pried into his life, but he feels like he needs to offer something in return for her openness.

“I’m sorry about that Will…”

“Don’t be… he was an asshole… we’re better off without him…”

“I see…”

\---

The both of them offer another prayer at Mari’s grave. The grave is already pretty clean, but Jane spends a few moments brushing away loose leaves and weeds. Will checks around the back of the grave where there’s a potted frilly white orchid looking languid in the pre autumn cold. There’s a small vase on a nearby grave that he uses to fetch some water for the flower before washing off Mari’s grave and returning the now cleaned vase.

“Penny for your thoughts?” Will asks Jane as the two of them sit in front of her grave.

Jane exhales quietly and rubs at her eyes “Well… the fact that her grave is at the church closest to your house further confirms the idea that the house and piano were hers. The dates on the grave means that she was 15 when she died. And the fact that it was 14 years ago but the grave is pretty clean means that someone has been visiting her… though I can’t exactly tell how often.” She lists off her deductions in a detached manner. “What about you?”

“… I dunno… I guess… it’s just... I’ve only now realized that she was a real person… I mean I already knew that but…”

“Reading about it is different from seeing it for yourself?” Jane finishes for him.

“Yeah…”

“She was 16” Jane continues “Not much older than us…”

Will thinks about the family she left behind. The family that didn’t, _couldn’t_ take her piano with them. Did they leave it behind out of grief or simply practicality? And beyond that, the friends and classmates that suddenly had to struggle with the idea that someone that they talked to, laughed with, was gone forever. Will thinks about the person who carved a message into the stump behind her house so as to never forget her.

It’s scary, he thinks…

That someone could gouge such a chasm in so many other people’s lives by leaving.

Will gradually but still abruptly stands up, before walking out of the cemetery. He wipes at his eyes and his sleeves come away damp. If Jane sees anything, she doesn’t say it.

There’s nothing else for them here.

\---

Jane eventually joins him out at the entrance to the church and the two of them begin walking home in silence. Will stares at his feet the whole way home so he doesn’t notice the stranger staring at his house from the sidewalk.

“O-oh n-no…”

“Um… excuse me? Are you alright?” Jane asks the stranger, prompting Will to look up.

“N-no! I mean I’m fine” the blond-haired stranger says, clutching nervously at his woolen green overcoat that’s a size too big for him. “I-I’ll get out of your way.” The man nibbles at his thumbnail as he steps past the two of them and begins hurrying down the street.

“Well, that was weird” Jane comments. When she turns back to Will he’s over by his mailbox picking up a dirt-stained burlap bag on the sidewalk.

“I think he left his stuff…”

Jane turns back around to look for the stranger but he’s surprisingly quick and is completely gone from sight. She internally debates whether or not she should chase after the man while Will peers inside.

Inside the bag is filled with a couple of small gardening tools, as well as a smaller plastic bundle. Will’s brows furrow as he pulls the bundle out and unwraps it, revealing a collection of flower cuttings including a distinct frilly white orchid.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> SO THE AUTHOR MADE AN OOPSY DOOPSY, A FUCKO WUCKO. turns out all the photos in Basil's album are dated, which puts Mari's canonical death/the day of the recital some time in October. Teehee~
> 
> oh well, the actual date doesn't matter and at this point I'm too far in to adjust every reference to it. (not just in direct mentions but also mentions of the vague timeline of the fic) so I'm just going to leave it.
> 
> Sorry this chapter took so long to come out. Irl tossed some shit at me and i'm like juggling several horses right now one of which is this fic. The good news is that i actually took a chain of scenes out of this chapter and moved it over to the next one. so progress is already made on chapter 5. no promises that it will come out faster though.
> 
> thanks for everyone's patience and encouragement.
> 
> EDIT: 5th MARCH  
> MORE FUCKO WUCKO'S, turns out Mari was a softball player. That's been fixed.


	5. The Third Clue, Flowers

It’s after school and both he and Jane are lounging outside on the grass in the yard. It’s a particularly warm day despite the yellowy green leaves that Will can spot on the trees beyond the fence.

Jane fiddles with a flower cutting, the stranger’s bag of supplies laying in between the both of them. They had spent the rest of their weekend searching for the stranger. Asking staff at the local hardware and gardening store if anyone had stopped by recently to purchase the supplies within the bag. But Fix-it didn’t sell cuttings only pre-potted plants. The gardening tools were likewise a dead end, too old to have been purchased recently.

There was little else to do but hand the bag into the local police station and hope it made its way back to its rightful owner.

“We could ask the police officers to put us in contact with the owner? If he ever stops by the station to pick it up” Jane suggests.

“We could…” but it was also entirely up to the stranger in the green coat whether or not he wanted to meet with them. There was a not zero chance that he would simply claim his belongings and ignore their request. That possibility was why the both of them were here lying in the middle of Will’s yard and not at the police station already.

Jane sits herself up and carefully rummages through the bag of gardening supplies perhaps checking for the 8th time whether or not any of the items were labeled with a name or address. She pulls out each plant cutting one by one, some were severed at the stem, some at the root, each one wrapped in damp paper to slow its wilt. Though with them having stalled for two days, the leaves were yellowing and drooping. In addition to the cut flowers there were several containers of bulbs and corns, separated by type but not labled, and a sachet of what are easily recognizable as sunflower seeds. There were even a few brambly stems that had been split at the bottom and prepared for planting, a thin mesh of roots already growing from the frayed ends.

“I don’t think these will last very long either… we could keep them in water for now? Tell the police that the rest of the plants are at your house?”

At that suggestion Will sluggishly sits up “that seems like our best bet right now isn’t it?”

“mhmm” Jane picks each blooming and thorny stem out of the bag, the bulbs can remain with the tools as they aren’t in immediate danger of wilting. She grasps the bundle of plants making a mock bouquet, careful not to prick herself on the thorns. “Right~ go get a vase or something.”

But Will doesn’t move, instead he stares at the mock bouquet, the sight triggers a memory in the back of his mind. He reaches forward and pulls one of the flowers out of the bundle before scooting over towards the patch of wildflowers surrounding the stump.

They match… which in hindsight isn’t as much of a revelation as it seems. The possibility that the man in the green coat was here to maintain the flower patch existed but was never openly acknowledged by the two of them.

But what is a revelation is that the frilly white orchid is the same type of plant that was behind Mari’s grave.

Will stands up and rushes back over to Jane plucking another plant from the bundle this time one without flowers, Jane is saying something in confusion, but he doesn’t pay it any mind as he wades through the tall grass. He finds a plant, also not in bloom, with the pattern of leaves and stems matching enough that they must be related.

Jane puts a hand on his shoulder “What is it?” she asks, and he takes a moment to organize his thoughts.

He tries to recall that first day he arrived in faraway, when the wind and the world and the skies above all lined up to grant him that one beautiful moment.

But it’s blurry now.

What shape were the flowers? What colors? What smells?

“This white flower was behind Mari’s grave” he begins. “And this plant with the little bulbs all hanging from the stalks… they’re here too” he holds the cut plant to the rooted one showing their similarities. “but there are no thorny plants… or else I would have scratched myself on them…” he glances around and points at a tall stem rising up out of the flower patch with violet-colored blooms pointing every way outwards. “There’s none of those cuttings though… but maybe those ones are grown from the bulbs instead?” he briefly recalls a tiny stalk of purple flowers, where? It escapes him now.

How many flowers? He thinks as he crouches down amongst the tall grass.

“The white orchid, the drooping stems with buds all along, the tall violet flowers, three kinds of bulbs… no one of the bulbs is for the tall violet flowers…”

“One of the bulbs must be for the white orchids as well, look…” Jane points at the cutting in his hands. “There aren’t any roots on the white orchid cuttings, they’re not for planting they’re for a bouquet. So one of the bulbs must be for planting the orchids” she walks back and fetches the bag of supplies before continuing “The ones with drooping stems are cut for planting so theres no bulbs for them, the tall violet flowers have no cuttings so they’re the second set of bulbs” Jane crouches down and pinches a broad leafed plant low to the ground “these might be the last set of bulbs so that’s four plants so far.”

“The sunflower seeds are the fifth, and those thorny stems I think are roses so that’s six” Will counts off on his hands.

“And a cactus”

“What…?”

Jane pulls out a medium sized plastic plant pot, Will peers inside and sees a couple of sachets of commercial cactus seeds. “Makes sense, Cacti can’t really grow in plain soil around here. I’m not even sure they can survive outside.”

“So cactus makes seven…?”

“I dunno this was your line of thought.”

William takes a deep breath before speaking again “These flowers wouldn’t have grown under a tree, there wouldn’t have been enough light for them. So all these flowers were planted around the stump after the tree was cut”

“By our stranger in the green coat right?”

“mhmm… which means they might be related to the message carved on the stump. The white orchid has to do with Mari’s grave. But what do all these other flowers mean then?”

“Alright… I guess we’re stopping by the library to research flowers?”

“No need” Will replies “We have a plant encyclopedia inside.”

\---

Jane manages to find the plant encyclopedia upstairs in his mothers’ room, while Will is searching through the bookshelf in the living room. The two of them set down the thick hardcover book on the coffee table before flipping through it.

There’s some difficulty in identifying each plant, only two of them are blooming right now and the rest have to be identified by leaves and stems. Gladiolus, the tall purple flowers are easy enough to find, roses and sunflowers from their thorns and seeds respectively, the plant with the drooping stem and little bulbs is a lily of the valley (poisonous he notes). But the other plants elude him…

Jane manages to spot a photo of one of the plant bulbs in the bag and then traces its entry to tulips. The plant with the broad leaves close to the ground.

Lilly of the valley, thought to be medicinal in folklore, actually poisonous, represents purity and sweetness…

Tulips have additional meanings depending on the color, but are generally associated with deep love, rebirth, and charity…

Sunflowers represent adoration and loyalty due to their prominent trait of faithfully following the sun across the sky…

Gladiolus, named after a sword due to their tall blooms are associated with strength and integrity…

Cacti represent endurance and tenacity thanks to their ability to survive on little water…

Roses also have a variety of meanings depending on the color, most to do with romance and love, but a handful of negative emotions like jealousy…

Which only leaves the white orchid… the one growing behind Mari’s grave and in her yard.

None of the other plant meanings stood out to him. Maybe the white orchid would be different… But after flipping through the book a third time the pair are left without a name to the bloom.

With a sigh, Jane closes the large hardcover book. “Well… did that give us any leads?”

With a sigh, Will shakes his head.

\---

In the end there’s not much else to do but place the bundle of cuttings into a vase of water. And pack the bulbs and seeds back into the bag so they can drop it off at the police station.

The white orchids, which have been cut for a bouquet, won’t last without roots, even in water. So, Will rolls the stem in his hand as he and Jane make their way over to the police station. Now that he’s paying attention, he spots a few other white frilly blooms, in the woods just beyond each street and house. There’s one even growing right beside the sidewalk.

“They’re all over town… that’s why it didn’t really register that they might be important.” Jane says when she catches him staring.

He pauses. And looks out to Faraway Plaza on the path ahead. Perhaps there’s one more chance he can take. “Do you think that someone at the hardware store might know what they’re called?”

Jane puts a hand on her chin in thought “… it’s worth a shot…”

“I’ll be right back.”

\---

The police station is past the plaza so it’s no real detour to stop by Fix-it and inquire about the flower. The man at the counter is a middle-aged man who is reading from a book on the countertop when he walks in. Will takes a moment to glance at the words on the page, some sort of self-help or financial literacy book, before clearing his throat and making his presence known.

“Oh, it’s you again, didja find the owner of that bag?”

William shakes his head “No sadly not, we’re on our way to the police station to drop it off at the lost and found in fact.”

“That’s nice” The man at the register (Mr Fixit himself if his nametag is to be believed) flips a page in his book “what are you doing back here then?”

William places the stem in his hand on the counter “We were just curious if you knew what kind of flower this was? It wasn’t in my plant encyclopedia at home.”

Mr Fixit picks up the stem and rolls it in his fingers “They’re called white egret orchids” he answers before handing it back to William.

“Are you sure?”

“Positive, there was a man a few years back, had us import a bunch of them from Japan. Not really sure what for.”

William considers the new information for a moment before asking his next question “do you know what they mean?”

“Mean?”

“Yeah… flower meanings or symbolism, anything like that”

“Sorry kid, not really my expertise”

William sighs disappointed that the trail seems to end there. He lightly bows to the man at the register who is already back into his book and walks away from the register.

As he heads back to the entrance, he sidesteps a woman waiting some distance away from the counter.

“Oh, is that an egret orchid?” the woman with a slight voice asks.

“Um yeah…” he replies caught by surprise at the woman’s acknowledgement. Was she listening to his conversation at the counter? “Do you know about them?” there are no other customers waiting in line and the clerk at the register is still deep in his book, so he doesn’t see any harm in starting up a conversation.

“There was a boy I used to look after a while ago that loved gardening, he grew a lot of white egrets orchids among other things. They’re very beautiful flowers.”

The woman in the lime green cardigan looks at the flower in his hand with such fondness that he instinctively holds it out for her to take. She holds the flower up and in the light it seems a little healthier, a little less withered. “Someone left them” he explains “as a message I think…”

“Well…” the woman begins, returning the flower to William “white flowers are associated with purity. But as for white egret orchids in particular…

 _My thoughts will follow you into your dreams”_ the woman recites. “the flower looks like a bird in flight see” she points and the splayed fringes of the bloom “So it became associated with longing and flight. Giving someone a white egret orchid conveys that you’ll always be thinking of them even when they’re far away.”

William stares down at the flower, a pure loving desire to see someone again, even when they’re long gone.

“Whoever left you that flower must care for you a lot.”

“Yeah…” he responds, smothering a pang of guilt over the little misunderstanding. “Thank you for telling me.”

“Of course, I’m happy to help…”

\---

The front desk is manned by an officer with a large frame and bangs that nearly cover her eyes. Jane is a little intimidated so she uses her polite voice when explaining the situation while Will places the bag of supplies on the front desk. Her worries turn out to be unfounded as the officer smiles gently and promises to pass on their request to the owner if he shows up.

As the two of them exit the station Jane spares a glance over to Will who has been essentially silent after sharing his encounter in the hardware store. Though they now have a new insight into the meanings of all the flowers in Will’s garden and the stranger’s bag, the truth is that none of those things are leads. She surveys his expression trying to identify if his silence is one of contemplation, digesting the intents behind the flowers in his yard, or frustration at no longer having any more leads to follow up on.

She’s suddenly taken aback when Will stops mid step and closes his eyes.

There’s music in the air, slowly Will opens his eyes again and turns to face the plaza. Out in front of HOBBEEZ the vintage boombox plays scratchy cassette tapes.

“He used to play here you know…” Jane says when she notices the faint beginnings of a smile on Will’s lips.

“… Who?”

“The guy who wrote that song” she replies, taking in the lively guitar chords filling the air.

“… Oh?”

The song was a minor hit a few years ago and “Guitar Guy” has remained a local point of pride ever since. “He used to play right outside of Gino’s” she says pointing to the empty spot and remembering a time when there were two sets of adult hands interlaced with hers as she skipped down the sidewalk to the sound of jaunty guitar tunes. “He saved up enough money to go travelling, and then he got big after that. But the plaza was never the same without his music. I think everyone was glad when HOBBEEZ started playing his music on the sidewalk.”

There’s a small smile on Will’s face as he absorbs the information which Jane takes as a good sign. Their conversation goes on as they head on back to Will’s house. With nothing else to do for the afternoon Jane pulls out a book and sits on the couch to read. Will in the meantime heads out to the garden and through the open doors Jane hears the sound of the garden hose, Will giving the patch of wildflowers a much-needed dousing.

Life goes on for the both of them…

\---

It’s the period after lunch when Miss Parker strolls into class 1E like she owns the place.

“Oh, I forgot” Jane murmurs.

Miss Grant is about to argue when Miss Parker places a small paper bag on her desk. She pulls it closer, peers inside, and then sighs, giving Miss Parker free reign to pluck both William and Jane out of class. “Told’ya I’d hunt the two of you down.” She comment’s to Will’s confusion and Jane’s chargrin.

This time Miss Parker doesn’t drag them as far as her office, instead electing to speak with them in the hallway. “So~ I need a favor.”

“From… us…?” William asks somewhat dubiously.

“Yep, do you remember that volunteer group I run?”

“The group that picks up trash around town?”

“That’s the one. We’re having a cleanup day at the park this weekend, and we’re a little short on numbers, so I’m calling up all my friends to see who’s willing to help out. Are you guys interested?”

“I mean…” Will glances at Jane who just shrugs. “What’s in it for us?” he inquires.

At that question, Miss Parker’s grin grows wider “Well~ we’re a volunteer group so I can’t exactly pay you, all I can offer is a free lunch. So really, you’ll be helping out of the goodness of your hearts~. _Buuuuut,_ I did do you guys a favor that one time. And it’s not like I’m pressuring you guys or anything but… this is a good chance to pay me back.” She pulls both him and Jane closer, as if the halls weren’t devoid of eavesdroppers “It’s fine if you pass… but there’s no telling what else I could call in that favor for later down the line.”

“… Are… are you blackmailing us…?” Jane quietly asks.

“Like I said, no pressure~”

\---

They both end up agreeing, it’s not like either of them have anything planned that weekend.

When they walk back into the class Miss Grant gestures for them to come over to her desk. She opens up the paper bag that Miss Parker placed on her desk and holds it out for them. “One each.”

Inside the bag are hard candies, in a variety of flavors. William picks a candy without any hesitation and pops it in his mouth while Jane ends up staring at the candy in her palm.

“… Did Miss Parker bribe you… with candy…?” she realizes.

“Yep” Miss Grant answers, popping a candy from the bag into her mouth. “And now that you’ve had some, you’re complicit as well.”

“This school is hilarious” William comments as he returns to his desk.

\---

It’s not the first time Will has been to the park, he and Jane have hung out there on more than one occasion after school. But he’s not prepared for just how busy the place is on weekends. When they two of them arrive at the park there are already volunteers out and about with trash bags and picker claws mingling with the public while collecting litter.

After a brief wait, Miss Parker emerges from somewhere beyond the tree line with a roll of trash bags and picker claws in one hand, and a bright red and white plastic pinwheel in the other. She blows on the pinwheel sending it spinning before reaching back and slotting it as a makeshift hairpin in her tied back ponytail. When she spots the pair over by the entrance, she waves them over.

Their job is pretty simple. Miss Parker hands each of them a rubbish bag and a trash picker claw. And explains that the park entrance is their meeting place, where she and some other organizers will be setting up a station to turn in full bags and retrieve new ones. It’s also where lunch will be delivered to everyone at noon, before the event ends. “You don’t have to go too far into the woods if you don’t wanna deal with all the bugs and mud and stuff. The adults can take care of that. Also feel free to say hi to anyone you bump into~”

And with that, Miss Parker unleashes them into the park with a playful push on the back.

\---

It’s not hard work at all. The park is already in good shape and the fact that they’re not the first volunteers to arrive means that a lot of litter has already been removed from the public spaces. Instead, most of what fills their bag is rubbish from kids and families coming up to them and asking if they could take their trash. The two of them are flooded with compliments for helping keep the town clean in the process. A couple of the older residents of Faraway spending their late mornings on walks through the park recognize Jane and she takes the time to introduce Will to some of them.

Jane doesn’t expect Will to hit it off with any of them, he barely interacts with others around his age. But he manages to get into a lively conversation with a middle-aged woman about how hard it is to get rarer cooking ingredients like halloumi cheese around Faraway.

It’s a start at least.

\---

“Is that Mr Owens…?” Jane blinks a few times, before looking to Will for confirmation.

The man in question is sat down on the grass with a bunch of young kids. Despite the obvious age difference, Mr Owens looks like he fits right in. in lieu of an answer Will sets his trash bag aside, strolls up to the circle of kids, and peers over Mr Owens shoulders to observe whatever’s going on. “Wow … that’s an _old_ pet rock.”

The kids all clutch their digital friends and watch with rapt fascination as Mr Owens battles the child opposite him with a vintage pet rock that’s several generations behind its opponent. “Oh! hey Will, you’re just in time to watch me win!” his greeting is peppered with the irregular beeping of his fossilized knick knack.

“Are… you seriously competing with children…? Over pet rocks…!?” Jane asks incredulously while spectating over Mr Owen’s other shoulder.

“First off, everyone is equal in the world of pet rocks, adult or child. Second, I had to prove that there’s nothing wrong with using an old pet rock.” Mr Owens punches a quick sequence of buttons into his device, a quick chorus of tones sounds out and the surrounding afficionados ooh and ahh at the bold strategy.

Mr Owens pet rock looks old enough to be a first-generation release which would make it older than most of the gathered audience. His opponent runs a third or fourth generation pet rock, not the flashiest model, and certainly not the latest, but definitely not the archaic museum piece that Mr Owens owns.

The battle seems to come to a head and all the kids wait with bated breath for the outcome, but after a tense sequence of beeps Mr Owen’s opponent jumps up an woops for joy in victory, the other kids all spring up to join them and Mr Owens is left sitting on the ground scratching the back of his head” Darn~ there goes my win streak” he takes a moment to dust off his faithful partner “can’t win them all eh Pluto?” before returning it to his pocket.

The kids all return from their victory high. The winner of the heated match takes a moment to declare it a “close game” before the spectators swarm Mr Owens with questions on everything pet rock related which he answers with matching enthusiasm. Will and Jane fetch their rubbish bags and return just in time to see the kids dashing off. “Well… we should get back to work.” Mr Owens says with a smile on his face.

“We?” Jane asks confused. To which Mr Owens pulls a folded up black garbage bag out of his pocket and billows it out in the air to unfurl it.

“Did Miss Parker blackmail you too?” Will quips once he realizes that Mr Owens is also involved in the cleanup operation.

“No, worse”

“Worse?”

“Yeah, we’re _friends._ ”

“That is worse” Will supposes.

\---

Mr Owens accompanies them on their trash picking for a while. But breaks off once Jane points out that his trash bag only contains an empty orange joe bottle he drank from earlier. “Just you guys wait, I’ll have this bag filled in no time!” he declares before jogging off deeper into the park.

Their own bags were half full, better than Mr Owen’s empty one, but they still had a way to go. So, the two of them ended up following Mr Owen’s lead and heading deeper into the park to gather rubbish. “Here looks good” Jane comments when they come across a small grassy patch beyond the tree line where various bits of litter dot the ground.

With a nod and a silent understanding, Will moves over to the far side of the clearing while jane begins sweeping the area from where they entered.

He methodically works his way up and down the grass picking up trash along the way. The clearing fills with the clack of their trash pickers and the rustle of grass. He turns around to make his third pass when he turns around and finds another set of shoes standing in his path. There’s a beat of a moment, before he follows the feet upwards and ends up staring straight into a familiar pair of bright amber eyes. “Hey buddy~” the clerk from HOBBEEZ greets. “lemme guess… Aubrey’s free pass came back to bite ya?”

It takes him a moment to register that he’s talking about Miss Parker. He glances over towards Jane’s end of the clearing where Miss Grant is walking alongside Jane, their conversation inaudible from this distance. He lets the gears spin in his head for a bit before answering, “Yeah…” he makes a bit of a show looking the clerk up and down “it _wasn’t worth the bat_ for you either huh?”

“Nope~!” the clerk answers before he wheels around and nudges Will along so that the two of them can continue sweeping through the grass.

“You know Mr Plantegg is retired right? I’m sure Miss Parker isnt going to un-retire him just for you.”

He expects some quip from the clerk about how Miss Parker would un-retire Mr Plantegg at the drop of a hat, but instead he finds the clerk leaning over him with his signature bright stare and toothy smirk “ _Aubrey_ ~”

“ _Miss Parker_ ”

The clerk points over towards the other end of the glade “Kim~”

“Miss Grant” Will replies defiantly.

The clerk points towards himself “Angel~”

Will tries to shoot back but realizes he doesn’t actually know the clerk’s name. “Is that even your real name?”

“Might as well be~” is his reply.

“Huh…” Will ends up pointing towards himself “William.”

“Buddy~” is the clerk- Angel’s defiant reply.

“ANGEL STOP MESSING AROUND, WE HAVE A BET TO WIN!” Miss Grant calls out from the other end of the clearing prompting everyone to get back to work.

\---

For the sake of their bet presumably, Miss Grant and Angel end up pouring all the trash from Jane and Will’s bags into their own, leaving them with a lighter step but also nothing to show for their progress. “I’m giving the both of you extra credit on the next assignment” is Miss Grant’s consolation.

“Are you allowed to do that?” Jane asks suspiciously.

“Yes, now don’t tell Aubrey. Also lunch is happening soon so the two of you should probably head over to the entrance” Miss Grant briefly steps back into her teacher persona before heading off with Angel in tow.

With a sigh and a shrug from Will, the two of them head out to the entrance of the park.

Miss Parker is there, using her trash picker to sort through some deposited bags, picking out anything that could be considered recyclable and passing it over to Mr Owens who seems to have given up on filling his own bag and instead opted to help out by sorting the recyclable materials into bags of paper, plastic and aluminum.

“Hey~ Will, Jane” Miss Parker greets each of them in turn “dropping off some trash?”

“uhm… no we uh didn’t really find anything” Jane nervously replies.

“What happened to the bags you had this morning?” Mr Owens calls out while tossing a handful of plastic bottles into a separate garbage bag.

Jane is unprepared for Mr Owen’s presence, throwing a wrench in the way she planned this conversation to go. For a moment she considers just giving up and telling them that Miss Grant and Angel came along and essentially stole their trash when Will speaks up.

“There was a big group of people having a picnic on the other side of the park. We gave our bags to them so that they could clean up after themselves when they were done. They said they’d give them to some other volunteers afterwards, or just throw them away themselves…

Should we not have done that…?” He asks with a faint guilty cadence that has Jane reeling at how smoothly he spun a convincing deception.

“Nah that’s fine then~ it’ll work out.” Miss Parker smiles, shrugs, and goes back to sorting through the bags.

“Sorry~” Will apologies anyway, perhaps for his fib, or maybe for coming back empty handed.

“You have a bunch of friends” Jane interjects, eager to change the subject. “We bumped into a lot of people that knew you, enough that I don’t really see why you needed us to help out today.”

“I do have a lot of friends” she replies, neatly sidestepping Jane’s question “And you haven’t even met half of them.”

“Well, we know Mr Owens.” The man in question beams from behind Miss Parker while Will begins counting off on his fingers “Miss Grant and Angel too…”

“Vance has a shift down at the candy store so he couldn’t make it today. He’s Kim’s- sorry _Miss Grant’s_ brother” Miss Parker looks over to the pair who are shaking their heads, neither of them being familiar with the candy store. “There’s also Charleen who works down at the police station who I assume you haven’t met, and Cris who’s overseas right now so you definitely haven’t met her.”

“Cris is my friend though!?” Mr Owens interrupts.

“She can friends with both of us, idiot!”

“I’m asking her who’s the better friend when she comes back.” Mr Owens says as he stuffs some browning newspaper into a bag, a pout on his face.

His response elicits an eye roll from Miss Parker who continues on. “Then there’s Mikhael and the twins, speak of the devil.” She nods over towards the entrance of the park where an unfamiliar face approaches. Upon seeing the group, the stranger places down the cardboard tray in his arms and rushes up towards them.

Jane is left speechless when the stranger suddenly kneels down in the grass, pulling both her hands into his. “ _fair maiden_ if I may have the honor of knowing your name- GAHA-” his speech is interrupted by Miss Parker’s fist colliding with the top of his head causing the stranger to bite his tongue.

“Mikhael, you better not be hitting on one of my **students** ” she says before dragging the blond-haired stranger, Mikhael, away from Jane by his collar.

“Nononononono Aubrey, you misunderstand.” He pleads as he’s pulled along the grass. Miss Parker throws him down among the garbage bags allowing him to continue “My interest in that fair maiden is purely _aesthetic._ ”

The comment earns a beat of silence from everyone present.

“ **I’m getting my bat.** ”

At the prospect of being bludgeoned to death Mikhael quickly rights himself and scrambles “Wait! All will be made clear, just allow me to introduce myself properly!” the absurdity of the situation allows him enough time to dust off the grass stains on his clothes and wheel around to face Jane, he places a hand over his face in a dramatic pose before cackling like a madman “Behold! Tis I _The Maverick_ , champion among men, ally of all women, and beautician extraordinaire!~” he takes a moment to frame Jane’s face in his fingers “And what crosses my sight but a blank canvas, a tabula rasa! The Mona Lisa, Aphrodite, and Mother Mary all waiting to be realized! Only I, a true artist! With masterful eye honed for years in the pursuit of beauty! Can perceive the immaculate form hidden just beneath the surface! Come fair maiden! Take my hand! I shall make you…

 **A GODDESS!** ”

…

“So, this is my friend Mikhael” Miss Parker introduces, ignoring everything in his rant. “He studied makeup and hairstyling in college. But he doesn’t have enough money to buy his own studio so he’s currently working at his family’s bakery to save up.”

“Oh, that explains the apron” Jane states, referring to the goofy beige apron Mikhael sports, the logo of the othermart bakery emblazoned on the front.

Mikhael’s distraction gives two new aproned strangers time to insert themselves into the conversation, “Dear little brother you can’t simply run off like that” the woman in the apron states. “You’re still on the clock even if we’re making a delivery to your friends” the man in the apron says, stacking Mikhael’s discarded cardboard tray of bread and sandwiches atop his own and bringing both into the park.”

The chaos escalates as Mikhael’s siblings begin mercilessly teasing their younger brother and Jane just finds herself staring at the surreal group of adults.

“Please believe me when I say not everyone in town is as weird as these guys” Jane assures Will.

“…”

“Will?” hearing no response she turns towards him… but there’s just an empty space where she thought he was standing.

Where… where did he go?

\---

There’s another white egret orchid in this clearing… Will is half tempted to pluck it from the stem but decides against it. He has nowhere to keep it on his person without it getting crushed, that and he still has the vase of other cuttings from the stranger sitting on the coffee table in the living room. He spends a moment crouched down by the tall flower before resuming his sweep of the grass.

His trash picker claw clinks against another empty can, rather than deposit it into his rubbish bag, he gently chip kicks the can over to the small growing pile of cans on the edge of the clearing.

His work is interrupted when he hears Jane calling out his name from afar “Will!”

“Over here!”

Jane enters the clearing “Where’d you go?” she asks.

 _Here_ , he almost snarks reflexively. But holds his tongue when he sees Jane panting slightly. “I felt bad for coming back with no trash” he instead responds. “And I didn’t really wanna sell out Miss Grant and Angel… Geez… adults can be so unreasonable.”

Jane still has an expression of confusion on her face, but her shoulders relax and Will supposes that’s good enough. “Tell me about it.” Jane begins “One of Miss Parker’s friends showed up and tried to talk me into getting my hair styled.”

That makes Will pause and shift his picker claw under his arm. “It could work” he says after using his freehand to frame Jane’s face from a distance, which earns a huff from her.

“Anyway, lunch is here. Let’s go back.”

“Mhmm, one sec” he murmurs, walking over to the pile of cans. He was keeping them separate so that the adults wouldn’t have to separate them later but without a second bag it looks like they’ll just have to go on top of all the other trash he’s picked up. “Oh wait” he suddenly realizes “you have an empty bag, right?”

“Yeah, right here” she replies unfurling the black garbage bag. “Want me to pick all those cans up?”

“No no, just hold it open.”

There’s a moment before Jane complies with his request, holding her bag open, confusion evident on her face. Will separates a can from the pile with his trash picker claw before smoothly rolling it onto his foot and booting it into the air. The can sails in a low arc before neatly landing in the mouth of Jane’s bag.

The feat earns a whistle of admiration from Jane.

It turns into a little game for the two of them, Will attempting increasingly more elaborate tricks with each can that goes sailing into the air. Often Jane has to sidestep slightly in order for the target to land, a few times the can goes flying wildly off course and Jane has to lunge to the side to capture it.

The grove empties of trash and fills with laughter.

\---

When they return to the entrance there are several picnic blankets lain out for the volunteers to sit on and enjoy their lunches. Sandwiches and other baked goods courtesy of the othermart bakery.

Will takes both his and Jane’s bag up to Miss Parker who is discreetly slipping Miss Grant a money bill. From a distance Jane sees Will apologizing, presumably for disappearing suddenly, before handing the half-filled bags of trash over.

“You’re a good kid Will” Jane hears Miss Parker say as she draws closer. Miss Parker pats Will on the shoulders a couple of times before taking the bags off his hands and telling the both of them to “enjoy lunch~”

\---

Will gets a second introduction to Mikhael, courtesy of Angel. The two of them pull off a flashy synchronized introduction routine that would be impressive if not incredibly cringe inducing. Before Mikhael once again waxes poetic about styling Jane’s hair. Surprisingly, he extends the invitation to Will as well.

“The pursuit of beauty knows no gender!” he exclaims proudly.

“He’s actually really good at his thing you know” Angel appends to the conversation. “He actually does our gang’s hairstyling.” That fact actually impresses them enough that Will ignores the fact that Angel just called their friend group a gang.

“Where’d your siblings go?” Jane asks Mikhael after looking around enough to conclude that they weren’t present.

“Sadly, Daphne and Bowen had to return to the bakery. They work full time, unlike me.”

“Seems I missed them…” Will adds, a little crestfallen.

To which Mikhael just smiles “Another time perhaps”

\---

“Oh, we go way back” Miss Parker says in between bites of sandwich “Me and Kel are childhood friends.”

“Yep~” Mr Owens wraps an arm over Miss Parker’s shoulders and beams his signature kilowatt smile “We’ve been besties since we were…” he takes a moment to count on his fingers “eleven?” he eventually concludes.

Will and Jane take a moment to digest the new information. Jane grabs a small pie from the tray of food in the middle of the blanket while Will looks around at the other members of Miss Parker’s friend group. Angel, Mikhael, Kim…

“Were you also a delinquent Mr Owens?” he asks bluntly which causes Jane to pause mid bite of her pie. “I mean… unless we’re still pretending its reasonable for a school guidance counsellor to own a nail bat.”

“I don’t own a nail bat.” Miss Parker says with a tone of amusement. While Mr Owens looks on sheepishly.

“Right, because Mr Plantegg is retired now…” Will finishes his sandwich before continuing “Also we found you and Miss Grant in the school yearbook. You don’t exactly look like model students”.

There’s a pause where Miss Parker does nothing but slowly widen her smile “Alright you caught me…” She raises her arms up in mock surrender.

“It wasn’t hard to figure out” Will murmurs.

“But no, Kel wasn’t a delinquent like me. I had a…” She pauses for a bit contemplating her vocabulary “ _phase_ back then, it’s over now…”

“Right…” Will says to the bubble gum pink haired student counsellor who threatens her friends with a baseball bat.

“It’s a good thing too” Mr Owens interjects “she was really scary back then. Like this one time-”

Mr Owens is silenced by Miss Parker bopping him in the face with the bag of paper recycling.

\---

Lunch ends and the volunteers start breaking off into their own groups to go home. Miss Parker sticks around to gather the scattered bits of paper from her attack, so Mr Owens ends up walking home with them. He and Will settle into their usual discussions of comics and other retro media. But Jane’s presence offers a fresh scholarly perspective that ends up making the both of them pause for thought at times.

Then Will comments on his possible brother that the two of them saw in the yearbook.

“Yeah! That’s Hero, my older brother! He’s doing his residency at the hospital in the city right now.” Mr Owens spends the next five minutes straight, gushing about his older brother to the two of them. Which then turns into another seven minutes of praising his younger sister Sally. Partway through the extended soliloquy Jane glances at Will who just shrugs and murmurs “ _siblings_.”

“Well, this is my stop, it was great hanging out with you guys today~” Mr Owens suddenly announces. They’re right outside of Will’s house… no the house next to Will’s? “See you guys at school!” Mr Owens calls out and waves behind him, already halfway up the path. “SALLY I’M HOME~!” and with that he disappears into the next-door house…

“I didn’t know Mr Owens was your neighbor…” Jane finally comments, unable to get a word in before Mr Owens sudden departure.

“I didn’t either…” the two of them had always met on the way to school. Mr Owens already having jogged around the block a few times. He was aware that he probably lived in the area, he just wasn’t expecting it to be right next door.

“…

Do you think he knows you’re neighbors?”

\---

The next day, Jane stops over at Will’s house to drop off a book that he’s been wanting to borrow from her for a while and is surprised when it’s not Will that answers the door but Mrs Sullivan instead. “Hello Mrs Sullivan, is Will home?”

“Oh, Jane was it…? sorry Will…” Mrs Sullivan idles for a moment, fiddling with her necklace, the ring on her finger clinking quietly against the ring chained around her neck. “He… isn’t home at the moment.”

“Where did he go?”

“I’m… not sure” she answers. “There’s no need to worry” she assures, noticing Jane’s worried expression “He does this sometimes. He’s always back before it gets dark…”

\---

Will rubs at his eyes, straining slightly from the sun pouring in through the carriage windows. The steady beat of the train upon track threatens to lull him to sleep, but he doesn’t want to risk falling asleep, even though his stop is still three quarters of an hour away.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> SORRY THIS TOOK SO DAMN LONG. itemizing the stuff i had to deal with this chapter:
> 
> 1\. my life got super busy all of a sudden  
> 2\. I had to research a bunch of plant shit to write this chapter  
> 3\. I had to murder my spiraling self doubt at the revelation that Mari's death would have been some time in October not September (I'm still in the process of doing that really)  
> 4.1. this chapter turned out to be WAY longer than i expected!? like... I aim for 4000 word chapters, and often overshoot and hit 5000 words. but like this one turned out to be 7000!?  
> 4.2. THIS ISN'T EVEN WHERE I WANTED TO END THE CHAPTER!? I WAS GOING TO DO ANOTHER BATCH OF SCENES BUT THEN REALIZED HALF WAY THROUGH THAT I WOULD OVERSHOOT!?  
> 4.3 I guess the above two points are actually good things in disguise. you guys get more chapter, and I get to lengthen the next one which honestly was the one chapter I worried about being too short.  
> 5\. there was also another little fuck up with how Mari was a softball player not a soccer one. i didn't realize the game confirmed she used to play softball. oh well, at least that one i can fix/has been fixed.
> 
> Anyway~ I'm pleased to say that I'm probably going to start replying to stuff once the next chapter drops. so look forward to that! (hopefully that thought will be enough to alleviate the wait)
> 
> also
> 
>  **Entire OMORI fandom:** The Maverick is so cringe, he's definitely going to regret that when he grows up  
>  **Me:** Unless.jpg

**Author's Note:**

> Come find me on Tumblr at @raynydaystorytime where i gush about literary analysis, review stuff, and generally be a big nerd about things.


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